Galway keep the conveyor belt rolling

The Galway minor hurling machine is rolling once more. Yesterday at Croke Park, Mattie Murphy guided another batch of Galway youngsters to success over Cork in the All-Ireland MHC semi-final and the victory pitches the Westerners into their fifth decider in six years against Kilkenny next month.

After relying on fortitude of character to bring them through against Wexford in the quarter-final, Galway expressed themselves here with a sparkling second-half patch that proved definitive in the overall outcome of the game.

“It's a nice feeling to come up to Croke Park and win,’’ Murphy reflected afterwards. “We were big underdogs today. That position suits us best. It was very tight at half-time. I was happy enough because I thought we hadn't played exceptionally well. We had got eight points from play and they'd got some from frees. It seemed the referee deemed our backs too rough and we weren't getting any frees ourselves. But I thought our backs defended heroically with our full-back line outstanding.