Gaelic Games

Tailteann Cup: Sligo preparing to go again after unlucky championship defeat to Galway

Deep into stoppage time against rivals in Connacht semi-final and two points ahead, but match-winning goal conceded

Sligo's dejected Paul McNamara at the final whistle after defeat to Galway. Photograph: Inpho
Sligo's dejected Paul McNamara at the final whistle after defeat to Galway. Photograph: Inpho
Paul Keane
Thu May 09 2024 - 06:00

A couple of days out from the start of the Tailteann Cup competition all 16 teams — New York when they eventually enter too — are united by the pursuit of a common goal, redemption.

Unlike the race for the Sam Maguire Cup, every single team in the second-tier competition has been scarred, to some extent, by a championship defeat.

Search down through the four groups of four and the biggest hard luck story of them all belongs to Sligo.

Written off by just about everybody ahead of their Connacht semi-final against Galway, they led by two points with only seconds of normal time remaining.

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They were still in front deep into stoppage time but spilled a ball on their 45m line and grimaced as Damien Comer burst away and set up a match-winning goal for Rob Finnerty.

Suddenly, a provincial final place, their Sam Maguire Cup status and an entry into the career highlights of every single Sligo player, had been whipped from their grasp.

“I was kind of in a state of shock really, to be honest,” said Sligo captain Niall Murphy. “I wouldn’t be an emotional fella at all but over the next couple of days, I just found myself getting emotional about it. I don’t know why but that’s the way it was. Just the shock of it and the opportunity you had, that you missed out on. The fact that we were beating them up until the 70th minute or something, it is just heartbreaking.

“I would have had a conversation with myself the day after, the Monday, the Tuesday, ‘Will you cop on’. But then you go back to moments in the game and you’re just thinking about if the final whistle had went, we would have won and how good that would have been but yeah, look, it was probably Friday before you were right again. I actually remember just being at the desk and going, ‘Right, that’s gone, as best you can let’s move forward’.”

Murphy (30) works in account management for a software company in Carrick-on-Shannon. He has a head for numbers and crunched a few of them after the Galway episode. Maybe they’d have gone on to win a first Connacht title in 17 years. Maybe they’d have picked up a win in the All-Ireland series to take their place among the country’s last 12.

Now they need to flip all that anguish and realise that six is their new magic number, the number of games it’ll most likely take for the 2022 semi-finalists to win the Tailteann Cup.

“We’re not sure if it was a flash in the pan or flukey or what,” said Murphy of the near miss against Galway. “We hope not obviously. The next couple of weeks will tell what our performance against Galway really meant.”

Sligo are in Group 2 of the Tailteann Cup, alongside Antrim, Wexford and Tipperary and will host Wexford back at Markievicz Park this Saturday in Round 1. Murphy believed beforehand that Sligo would beat Galway so they should hit the pitch armed with confidence against a Division 4 county.

“I would have believed we could beat Galway, 100 per cent, yeah,” said Murphy. “You’ll ask ,‘Why?’ We were after getting promoted to Division 3 for this year, had a good campaign, unlucky nearly not to go up again. Add in the fact that it was Markievicz Park, add in the fact that Galway were missing a lot of lads.

“As I said, I don’t know was it a flash in the pan, was it luck or fluke? But we definitely felt going into it that we wouldn’t be far away.”