Humbled and hurt Tribe offer no excuses
Moore was stretchered off after requiring eight minutes of treatment following a sickening collision with Kilkenny’s Walter Walsh.
However, medics last night reported that the Galway man will make a speedy recovery after suffering concussion and the Turloughmore stalwart should be ready in time for their championship opener in less than eight weeks.
Galway had started well and led when Moore left the field of play but selector Tom Helebert insisted that the incident did not impact on the team’s performance thereafter.
“They had the momentum before that; they were after tacking on three points before he got hurt and we were starting to leak a little bit around the middle third at that juncture, so I would not pin it entirely on Fergal’s injury because that would be hiding behind the obvious,” he contested.
“Richie Power started to drift out from centre-forward and picked up a lot of ball and their back-line solidified us very well when he did that and they just clamped us in the middle of the park. From there that was their spring-forward and inside (Aidan) Fogarty was sharp, Lester Ryan picked up three very good points from the middle of the park and all these things together give you an eight or nine point swing and that’s what we have to close down.”
Helebert, however, insisted an eight-week layoff without a competitive fixture is manageable.
He explained: “They need a break, we’ve had a tough campaign right the way through, because we’ve been gearing ourselves programme-wise all the time to a Leinster final — or a Leinster semi-final — and that’s our big target. I’m sure they’ll be very happy to take a week off now. Their club championship commences next week, that will bring a little bit of freshness and spice to the whole thing, and off we go again.
“Are we worried about the big break? Not particularly. We’ve to manage a schedule. Whether you play one game, three games or five games in between makes no difference, you have a programme to manage and times to peak and times to ease up, and that’s the way we plan it.”
Helebert admitted that seeing yesterday’s semi-final peter out came as a disappointment to Galway, who beat Kilkenny in last year’s Leinster final before running the Cats to an All-Ireland final replay.
Already this year, Galway had scored a League victory over the Noresiders but despite Brian Cody’s absence from the touchline, the League and All-Ireland kingpins were too good.
Helebert said: “But if you look at the league overall and some of the strange results that came out of it, you saw that in a lot of games where teams got on top they went on to win easily and teams figured out with 10 or 15 minutes to go that the game was over and basically went through the motions.”
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