Galway 1-27 Wexford 0-17
However we saw it going, we didn’t see it like this. Galway rinsed the stamp of Leinster champions off Wexford on Saturday night without ever having to turn the hose onto full power. As if hurling in an empty stadium wasn’t surreal enough, the fizz and bang of Halloween night fireworks around Dublin’s northside on Saturday couldn’t have felt less appropriate.
Shane O’Neill’s side had 10 different scorers and finished the night with 13 points to spare in the end, one of those margins that come down to the choosing of the victor long before night’s end. It could have been plenty more had they felt the need but they settled where they settled. It was still a record margin. To put it in the books without either of Daithí Burke or David Burke is quite a night’s work.
Still, the abiding sense you were left with after this one was less about Galway and more about Wexford. After all the craft and grit they showed in winning their Leinster title in 2019, it felt a shame that they gave it up here in such a wan fashion. They went stride for stride with Galway for most of the opening half hour but dissolved from that point onwards. They were unrecognisable from any other stage in Davy Fitzgerald’s tenure.
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Threw in the towel’
“I suppose for the first time in three-and-a-bit years I’ve been with Wexford we didn’t fight,” said Fitzgerald afterwards. “We threw in the towel and that’s the bottom line. I have to apologise to the Wexford people because we’re not like that. We let them down today, we didn’t perform and we hold our hands up because we were absolutely terrible. We were shocking. Any team you are over you want them to fight and do whatever. We didn’t do that today and that’s not good enough as far as I’m concerned.
“I don’t know why that was. The first 20 minutes we were in it, we probably had two or three goal chances. We retaliated when we shouldn’t have retaliated but they’re small things. As the game went on, they won the 50-50 battles more and the thing that annoys me more was we didn’t push in the last 15 or 20 minutes. We just put up the white flag and saw the game out and that is very disappointing.
“Look, other teams have got the same thing. I think Tipperary got beaten in a Munster final last year pretty well. I’m not really worried what the result is the next day; what I’m worried about is will we come out and will we f*****g fight. That’s the f*****g name of the game. I’m involved in hurling to compete; I’m not involved in f*****g hurling to go out there and put up the white flag and hand Galway a game like we did tonight. It’s absolutely horrendous and I’m not happy with it.”
For a while, this was like a lot of hurling matches are these days. Careful and stop-start, like a frame of snooker where both players know that one bad safety shot will leave the other in for a bout of heavy scoring. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course – some of our best friends are snooker players, etc. But it all gets a bit samey after a while.
But after the sides went to the first water break level at 0-7 apiece, Galway needed to give only the slightest squeeze on the accelerator to pull clear. Wexford’s challenge slid gradually towards the cliff’s edge before tumbling into the ravine. For the remaining 50ish minutes of the night, they were outscored by 1-21 to 0-10.
Conor Whelan and Brian Concannon caused untold damage in the Galway full-forward line. They put up 1-8 from play between them, with Concannon’s scooped goal on the half-hour the only difference between them. It was a fairly scruffy affair, bundled over the line after confusion in the Wexford square under a dropping Joe Canning free. But it was no less than his enterprising performance deserved.
Stacking the box
As it turned out, that spell after the water break killed the game. Galway’s six-point half-time lead was stretched to eight soon after the restart with points from Jason Flynn and a rampant Whelan. Galway were like an NFL defence, stacking the box and stopping Wexford’s runners through the middle at every opportunity.
Whelan scored from a turnover, Johnny Coen did the same, Concannon and the two Mannions swished points of their own. By the 50th minute, Galway were out the gap, 1-20 to 0-14 to the good. It was challenge match stuff after that.
“It definitely wasn’t easy,” O’Neill said afterwards. “It wasn’t easy for us on the line and it wasn’t easy for the boys. You can see it - they are exhausted inside but that was because of the shift they put in. I thought their application was superb from the word go. They worked very hard, we were expecting different scenarios and they adapted very well. I thought they were excellent.”
Wexford: Mark Fanning (0-1, 0-1 free); Simon Donoghue, Liam Ryan, Aidan Nolan (0-1); Paudie Foley (0-2, 0-1 65), Matthew O'Hanlon, Shaun Murphy; Kevin Foley (0-1), Diarmuid O'Keeffe; Joe O'Connor, Lee Chin (0-8, 0-5 frees), Liam Óg McGovern; Rory O'Connor (0-3), Conor McDonald, Paul Morris (0-1).
Subs: Jack O'Connor for McGovern, 41 mins; David Dunne for O'Keeffe, 51 mins; Damien Reck for Nolan, 58 mins; Mikie Dwyer for Morris, 65 mins.
Galway: Éanna Murphy; Sean Loftus (0-2), Fintan Burke (0-1), Aidan Harte; Pádraic Mannion (0-2), Gearoid McInerney, Shane Cooney (0-1); Cathal Mannion (0-2), Johnny Coen (0-1); Conor Cooney, Joe Canning (0-9, 0-7 frees, 0-1 65, 0-1 sideline), Joseph Cooney; Brian Concannon (1-4), Conor Whelan (0-4), Jason Flynn (0-1).
Subs: Niall Burke for Flynn, 54 miss; Sean Linnane for Conor Cooney, 64 mins; Adrian Tuohey for Harte, 67 mins; Eavan Niland for Concannon, 70 mins; TJ Brennan for S Cooney, 73 mins.
Referee: Colm Lyons (Cork).
