By Cian O'Connell

It has been an Allianz Football League campaign loaded with injury issues for Galway, but Kevin Walsh remains content.

Though 'disappointed' not to earn anything from Sunday's Tuam Stadium encounter against in form Kerry Walsh was encouraged by the manner in which Galway responded in the second period.

Trailing by five points at the interval Galway took the lead in the closing stages courtesy of a Danny Cummins goal, but Kerry recovered.

Black cards at the end of each half to Barry McHugh and Tom Flynn were costly. "Yeah they were at crucial stages to be honest, but that’s what it is you have to deal with that," Walsh reflected. "Sometimes that can be hard on the players. You mightn’t get the exact result you want on the day, but sometimes it just makes you work that bit harder even though the outcome mightn’t be what you want.

"It is a bit disappointing, we feel we definitely kicked away a good few opportunities. At the same time we probably found ourselves five points down before half time and four of those points came in the last six or seven minutes before the break."

Walsh was pleased by the way Galway battled after the restart. "We asked for a bit of character testing at half time and in fairness they showed that in spades," Walsh says.  "It mightn’t have showed fully on the scoreboard. We gave away one or two late points and at the end of the day Kerry are gone home with the two points and that’s it."

With so many key figures absent Walsh is pleased by the progress being made by Mountbellew-Moylough's John Daly and the O'Laoi brothers, Antaine and Finian, from An Spideal.

"On that side of it is Shane Walsh and Sean Kelly both came off injured which just adds to the list again," Walsh remarked.  "We’ll have to see how that goes. But then again, a few young fellas came in, young Finian O Laoi made his debut there and looked lively. 

"Antaine started in only his second game, John Daly came in for his second game. That does help in the long term, to produce a few players, albeit the outcome wasn’t exactly what we wanted."