The county’s Minor footballers this evening lost out narrowly to Galway in Round 5 of the Connacht Minor football Championship. In miserably wet conditions in Tuam, in what was a dead-rubber encounter, Galway prevailed by 3-14 to 3-12. The counties will now meet again in two weeks time in the provincial semi-final.

With nothing on the line this evening, Tom Reilly and David Heaney quite sensibly opted for wholesale changes to the team for this match. Aside from ‘keeper Thomas Williams, tonight’s Mayo team was completely different to the one that had lined out last week against Sligo. Galway, by contrast, opted to field the bulk of the team that had lined out in their last game, which was also against Sligo, two weeks ago.

The result was a highly competitive match where the two teams went at it in the mud-splattered conditions for the entire hour. Our lads enjoyed marginally the better of the first half exchanges and went in 2-5 to 1-7 in front, the two goals coming from Patrick Garvey and Oisín McCann.

Galway struck back in the second half and it took a third Mayo goal, this one from Jack Comer, to stem the tide now flowing strongly in the home team’s favour. When the young Tribesmen bagged their third goal, with a bit under ten minutes to go, they were back in front and it was a lead they’d hold from then to the finish.

Match highlights from Connacht GAA here.

We’ll have a Final Whistle pod from the game in Tuam up on Patreon in a bit.