Skehill mentally drained after ‘anti climatic’ finish

For only the third time in their 12 All-Ireland finals under Brian Cody, Kilkenny were denied a goal yesterday.

On those two occasions in 1999 and 2004, Cork’s shutout was integral to victories over the Cats.

In keeping a clean sheet, James Skehill did all he could to replicate Dónal Óg Cusack and help steer his team to another famous win over Kilkenny.

It didn’t turn out to be enough but his point-blank save from Colin Fennelly in the 61st minute and foul on Eoin Larkin in the 68th minute undoubtedly went some way to ensuring Galway didn’t lose. The Fennelly save drew a collective gasp from Croke Park in its excellence and he happily gave away a free in covering the ball as Kilkenny’s forwards hovered to pick up the ricochet (Cusack did the same against Waterford in the 2007 All-Ireland semi-final). Shefflin pointed the 21-metre free but it was collateral damage.

As Skehill recalled: “I suppose so many things go through your head in a split second of a game and I made a decision that no goal was better than anything else so I made a dive on the ball and gave away the free and at least give us a chance of saving it.

“The coaches have always told me through the couple of years to make myself as big as humanly possible when it’s one-on-one.

“He shaped to my right so I just dived across the goal and tried to spread myself as much as possible.

“Luckily, it hit me in the wrist or somewhere — I don’t really know where. Some days those balls are stuck by you but thankfully I came out on the positive side today.”

As for giving away the penalty when bringing down Larkin, Skehill wasn’t making any apologies. Needs must be met and he had to take matters into his own hands.

He picked up a yellow card in doing so while Shefflin looked set to strike for goal only to point high to put Kilkenny a point ahead — their last score of the game before Joe Canning equalised.

Although he described the draw as an “anti-climax“, Skehill is thankful for the second bite of the cherry just as much as he is glad Galway have three weeks to build themselves up again.

“It’s a funny feeling — it’s not exactly common ground for us, it’s probably nearly 60 years since the last draw.

“I’ve never witnessed it in my lifetime. It’s partly an anti-climax, part of it is enjoyable, but we’re the only unbeaten team in the championship this year. That’s a positive in itself.”

As soon as their dinner reception was done in the Regency Hotel, they made tracks for home to prepare themselves for a third championship date with Kilkenny in three months.

“We’ve three weeks now but we’ve won nothing. Then again, we lost nothing either. It leaves us with a lot to work to do, for sure.

“We went 15 or 10 minutes without a score so but we managed to score goals and not leak any, so that’s a positive. There are positives and negatives to take out of every game and none more so than this one and we just have to try and knuckle down and analyse where we went wrong and fix that and raise our performance another 20% because I’m sure Kilkenny will do that themselves.

“It’s mentally draining even for me as a goalkeeper. You feel fatigued after the game and I can’t imagine how the lads out the field must be.

“Three weeks is the minimum you want to prepare. Seven days or 14 days because you’re trying to recuperate your bodies as amateur players and that’s very difficult.

“We’re not beaten and we’ve three weeks of training to look forward to and hopefully three weeks of improvement.”

Even though they lost a five-point half-time lead, Skehill insists Galway will be the better for the performance.

“We know the decibel level, we know the size of the crowd, we know the noise of Hill 16. We’re familiar with all of them and at least we have that now.

“Even playing in my first All-Ireland, that’s a bonus but we still realise we have a lot to do and hopefully we can get over the line the next day.”

He also takes encouragement from his belief that Galway people will take pride in their team’s performance.

“There’s only so many times you see Galway people in Croke Park shouting you on and they did a great job of supporting the team.

“I hope that we restored a bit of pride in the jersey after the last couple of years and I hope that they come out in their numbers the next day.”