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Are Galway on the right track? Kevin Walsh considers questions of progress

For two years in a row now, Galway's footballers have managed to get to the quarter final stage o...



Are Galway on the right track?...
Football

Are Galway on the right track? Kevin Walsh considers questions of progress

For two years in a row now, Galway's footballers have managed to get to the quarter final stage of the All Ireland Championship.

But like last year, that's as far as they will go, having lost to Kerry at Croke Park on Sunday.

Kerry were favourites going into the clash and ultimately won out 1-18 to 0-13 but Galway had at least three excellent goal chances that weren't converted.

Last year, it was Tipperary who overcame them 3-13 to 1-10 at that stage but in 2016 at least, there was silverware in the shape of a first Connacht title since 2008. This year, Roscommon exacted revenge in the Connacht final, leaving Galway with what proved to be an insurmountable challenge against Kerry.

Speaking to Off The Ball's John Duggan, Galway manager Kevin Walsh does see signs of progress as the county's footballers look to return to the prominence achieved by the sides of the late '90s and early 2000s, which Walsh himself featured in.  

"The boys are definitely getting there I think," he said.

"In my three years there, we've come in to improve things as much as we could. We always said the most [important] thing was to make Galway competitive as best we could and second thing was to leave Galway football in a better place.

"We're still thriving to do that and I think if you look over the last two years, a few little things have happened and Top Four was where we probably wanted to go this year but because of the Connacht final loss, we probably found ourselves against the best team in Ireland, so to guarantee to get over that is tough and we felt we had a great chance of that.

"So maybe if we came in a different route, we could have been in the last four. I think we're the only team from the provincial losers to come out and win, so that's another achievement in itself that these boys showed resilience and that's important as well."   

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