The Galway minor footballers.
Electric Ireland Connacht Minor Football Championship
ROSCOMMON 0-20 (0-1-18) SLIGO 0-8 (0-0-8)
GALWAY 3-19 (3-1-17) LEITRIM 2-11 (2-2-7)
Roscommon and Galway both made strong starts in their bids to end Mayo’s run of dominance in the Electric Ireland Connacht Minor Football Championship last night, recording comprehensive wins over Sligo and Leitrim.
An overcast King and Moffatt Dr. Hyde Park was the venue for Roscommon’s clash with Sligo, where corner forward Luke Shally and midfielder Sam Hannon hit 0-10 between them to power a double-figure win for the home side.
Shally hit four of his six points during Roscommon’s explosive start to the contest, when they racked up an early 0-6 to no score lead by the midway point of the first half.
Éanna Giblin’s effort with the outside of his right boot got Sligo off the mark at that stage but Roscommon didn’t lose any momentum, following up with a free by captain Dara Curran and the game’s only two-pointer, coming from the boot by Sam Hannon.
Sligo gave themselves some hope with a run of three points in a row before half-time from Ryan Healy, James Donoghue and Ryan Lang while Lang also opened the scoring in the second half to reduce the gap to four points, but from there Roscommon took over again.
Shally and Hannon tacked on further points while Marc Shally and Dean Casey came off the bench to make strong contributions, putting their hand up for increased playing time in what should be a very informative contest away to Galway next Friday evening.
The young Tribesmen will go into that game in fine form too after they had 11 points to spare against a lively Leitrim side at Cloone, completing an underage double after their U-20 win over the same opposition on Wednesday.
The contest followed a similar pattern too, with Galway largely out of sight by half-time. Darragh Costello and Leitrim midfielder Thomas Gunn exchanged goals in what was an entertaining start to the contest, but after Gunn’s goal, Galway shot seven of the next eight points to lead by 1-10 to 1-2 at half-time.
Halfway through the second half Cillian McPhillips had become the last of the six Galway forwards to get on the scoresheet, Andrew Kehoe scored the game’s first two-pointer, and Joey Cullinane’s goal made it 2-14 to 1-3. The next four points went Galway’s way as well and with five minutes to play Ciarán O’Donnell came forward from centre back to score their third goal, but Leitrim gave themselves something to hold onto for the remainder of the game, with Jack Moolick raising two orange flags either side of a goal from Daire McCabe.
