Round-up: Dalata Hotel Group Connacht U20 Championship action
Galway U20 manager, Kevin Johnson.
Dalata Hotal Group Connacht U-20FC Round Two
ROSCOMMON 2-19 (2-4-11) SLIGO 0-15 (0-5-5)
LEITRIM 0-11 (0-2-7) GALWAY 2-11 (2-0-11)
Galway are the clear front runners out west with a perfect two-out-of-two record in the Dalata Hotels Connacht U-20 Football Championship, heading into their bye week.
Kevin Johnson’s side were due to go to Cloone but due to the heavy rainfall, Leitrim were forced to concede home advantage and move their clash with Galway to the Connacht COE in Bekan, where the Tribesmen ran out 2-11 to 0-11 winners.
Two goals in the space of four minutes approaching half-time settled an otherwise competitive fixture, where a pair of Paul Honeyman two-pointers had nudged Leitrim into a narrow lead.
Matthew Collins put Galway back 1-4 to 0-6 ahead with the first of two green flags, but it was Ciarán Mulhern’s slick run and his swift one-two with Killian Joyce that left Leitrim with a mountain to climb at half-time, six points adrift with no strong wind advantage either way.
Ronan Fox and Jack Kelly got some good scores for Leitrim in the second half but they always trailed by at least five points, meaning their first game in this campaign ended in defeat and the pressure is mounting ahead of their clash with Sligo.
The Yeats County are likely to be shellshocked going into that fixture after they went from 11 points up to losing by ten in Dr. Hyde Park this evening.
The strong wind blowing down towards the graveyard end of the Roscommon venue was certainly a factor, but there was much more to this extraordinary turnaround.
Without doubt, Sligo used the breeze brilliantly in the first half. Eamon O’Mahony hooked over two majestic doubles with his left boot, Eli Rooney and Cian Nicholson got in on the act with orange flags of their own, but it looked like Sligo’s dominance was built on solid foundations.
Conor Walsh was a dominant presence in the middle with Eamon Keane driving forward effectively and while John Curran and John McGuinness were lively and keeping the visitors’ defence honest, there seemed to be enough variety in the Sligo attack to suggest that they would continue to be a threat.
At 0-14 to 0-3 approaching half-time, they weren’t going to need much more. Even when Colin Murray fired in a superb goal in first half stoppage time, it felt like a life raft, rather than a game changer.
Then the second half started with Eoin Collins flicking Niall Heneghan’s high ball to the Sligo net, and suddenly Roscommon had unstoppable momentum. Curran and McGuinness continued to buzz around effectively but Charlie O’Carroll took over the bulk of the scoring to finish with 0-8, while Nikita Berzins, Keelan Kelly and Diarmuid O’Higgins all produced stellar defensive displays.
