This was no classic but the 8,000 fans who had descended on TEG Cusack Park were still kept rivetted by the closeness of it all. Sixty-six minutes in, 10 points apiece, everything to play for. But in a game littered with plenty of over-and-back probing, Ray Connellan played one sideways pass too many for the hosts.
His intended target was Charlie Drumm but Walsh, Galway’s mercurial Merlin All-Star of 2022, scented blood, burst from the line and intercepted.
He was still around 65m from goal but, as Westmeath manager Dolan admitted, “you weren’t going to catch Shane Walsh when he got road. And that’s what ultimately decided the game”.
Pádraic Joyce wasn’t inclined to disagree. “Showed great acceleration,” the Galway manager remarked. “One-on-one, he was going to go for goal. If he went for a point he’d get an earful.”
And so, to Westmeath dismay and Galway relief, it was a case of Groundhog Day with a cruel twist for Connellan.
In the same fixture 12 months ago, Westmeath were level beyond 50 minutes when Connellan walked for a second yellow . . . Galway won by eight.
Here, level again, Connellan must have almost hoped that the ground would swallow him up. He had been one of Westmeath’s better players in the first half but, just minutes earlier, had shot wide from the left wing.
The game had got “got very tight and tough and tense”, Dolan surmised, but he made it clear that Connellan wouldn’t be the fall guy. “It’s inter-county football. You don’t have to tell me about making mistakes . . . it’s ruthless,” he reflected.
“I spoke with Ray already. We wouldn’t have been in these positions without Ray, because he’s such a valuable player to us. And he’s been an immense talent, probably one of the more consistent players I’ve had in my time here. So there’s no issue with Ray, that’s football.”
Victory safeguards Galway’s progress to the knockouts, but they will be desperate to avoid a repeat of last June when Armagh’s injury-time winner rerouted them to a preliminary quarter-final which they lost to Mayo.
This time around, Galway and Armagh are on four points (after the latter’s blitz of Derry) ahead of their finale at a neutral venue yet to be confirmed.
Complicating matters is the likelihood that skipper Seán Kelly and Damien Comer (both muscle injuries) will remain sidelined, but Joyce offered a guardedly optimistic note that Rob Finnerty (knee) “might be OK” for that game.
“It is never-ending injuries, unfortunately,” he lamented. “We are not alone in that. Everyone is picking up injuries, every county. The problem is if you get a niggle now, you are missing two games.”
The worry for Galway is they don’t look half as penetrating minus Comer and Finnerty, amplifying the pressure on Walsh to deliver.
He was lively in the first half here, kicking a sublime point from the left wing and involved in several other scores, and lethal when it most mattered. But Galway will need a more multi-pronged threat to go deep into this championship.
In mitigation, Westmeath’s low-block defence was difficult to penetrate and they were also efficient when facing the wind.
They had no first-half wides (two efforts fell short and another was blocked) with Sam McCartan, Connellan and the marauding Ronan Wallace landing impressive points as they retired for tea leading by 0-8 to 0-7.
Maybe it might have been a different story if Céin Darcy had found the net, instead of Jason Daly’s palms, in the opening seconds.
But Westmeath limited the damage to two points during Ronan O’Toole’s spell in the sin-bin after his 10th-minute black card. There was no card at the other end, late in the half, when Wallace was pushed over (rather than pulled to the ground) as he bore down on goal – to Dolan’s palpable frustration.
On the restart, John Heslin’s 39th-minute free edged Westmeath two ahead – but they failed to score for the next 24 minutes.
If Cian Hernon had connected properly with his point-blank goal chance, Galway might have pushed on. Instead, they were left sweating until Walsh’s intervention.
“We can’t win every game as comfortably as we’d like,” Joyce pointed out. “We dug out a result there – that was a good sign of a squad.”
Nor was Dolan too despondent as he faces into a do-or-die shoot-out with a recently imploding Derry.
“We’ll be looking forward to that,” he insisted. “It’s a great challenge, and it’s a good platform for us to push on.”
SCORERS – Galway: S Walsh 1-4 (0-3f); C Gleeson (2 ’45s’), M Tierney 0-2 each; C Darcy, C Hernon, C McDaid, K Molloy 0-1 each. Westmeath: J Heslin 0-5 (5f); R Wallace 0-2; S McCartan, R Forde, D Lynch, R Connellan 0-1 each.
GALWAY: C Gleeson 7; J Glynn 6, S Fitzgerald 7, J McGrath 8; D McHugh 6, L Silke 7, J Daly 5; P Conroy 6, J Maher 6; J Heaney 7, C Hernon 6, C Darcy 6; M Tierney 7, C McDaid 6, S Walsh 8. Subs: D O’Flaherty 6 for Hernon (45), S Mulkerrin 6 for Daly (45), T Culhane 6 for McDaid (52), C Sweeney 7 for Heaney (55), L Ó Conghaile for Maher (65), K Molloy for Mulkerrin (temp 70).
WESTMEATH: J Daly 6; K Maguire 7, C Drumm 7, J Gonoud 6; R Wallace 8, D Lynch 7, J Dolan 6; R Connellan 6, A McCormack 7; S McCartan 6, R O’Toole 5, J Lynam 6; S Baker 5, J Heslin 6, R Forde 6. Subs: L Loughlin 6 for Forde (52), S Smith 6 for Baker (55), S Allen 7 for Gonoud (56), K Martin for Lynam (69), D Scahill for Dolan (temp 70).
REF: N Cullen (Fermanagh).
