John Prenty of the Connacht council patted Kevin McStay on the arm as he walked by and McStay told him: "You're the happiest man here." It was probably true. A draw was a fair result, just about.
Roscommon showed courage to stick with a Galway team buoyed by a huge wind and growing self-belief to pluck two late, unlikely points which forced a draw. That second half of football was as testing as they have experienced under the Fergal O'Donnell/McStay administration.
“We were well up for it at half-time,” said McStay. “We anticipated this all week . . . that it was going to be a very un-Galway like defence. And they are entitled to do whatever they want to do. And we took our own precautions at the other end too. So that’s just the nature of it.
“And the wet conditions really made it difficult because they turnovers kept coming. You are trying to get pace and you are trying to get wide and then the ball falls out of your hand. But I’m very happy we got through our first Connacht final. We had eight under-22s, 23s playing and got another three on. They’ve a Connacht final played now and they have that in the tank now. How did we do in midfield? Dogged it out a bit. We are still alive. Fifteen minutes to go if they got up to three, four we were in trouble. So that’s great fight. You could walk away from that battle easy enough.”
Across the corridor, Kevin Walsh nodded at the what-if questions. He has been through enough of these days to know that his team came very close to winning the Nester Cup here.
“It is half-time now in a two-game series. You are two points up with a breeze behind your back, you would like to see out. But we had one or two chances that we didn’t put over the bar and one or two counter attacks that ended up in one or two late Roscommon frees. We probably went a little deep in defence.”
Walsh acknowledged Galway set up exceptionally defensively at times here but clarified that the pattern of the game contributed to that as much as tactical intention.
“It was very tactical. But I think a lot of it was down to the way both teams set up. I’m sure both teams didn’t want to see 14 men behind the ball, but when you have runners come from all sides and if the forward doesn’t follow him, he is going to get chewed off on all sides. Sometimes a game works out like that where you have a lot of bodies behind the ball, particularly when the weather conditions were so poor.
“We coughed up an early goal in the first half like we did in the Tyrone league game. We were a bit unlucky. It was bobbling around the place and toe got to it. That is around the third goal this year where we have been unlucky in that sense. The boys were asked questions when they went down four points so it was great to see that response. The wind doesn’t make a whole pile of difference in championship football at this level.”
Not surprisingly, the Roscommon management team informed their chairman they would like to exercise their option to have the replay moved: with Hyde Park out of commission, MacHale Park is the obvious choice, with a Saturday evening throw-in yet to be confirmed. The replay further busies next week’s schedule, with the Ulster and Leinster finals fixed to take place
“We only gave an opinion to the county chairman,” said McStay. “It is his decision. But why would we give Galway an advantage? I know we get the next two in the Hyde but sure Fergal and I might be old grey men when the next one comes to the Hyde. When you have an advantage you have to pull on it. So it will be interesting going back to Castlebar to try and win a Connacht championship.”
