Galway overwhelm battling Westmeath

In what was something of a dead rubber for both sides, Galway, as expected, had a big win by a 4-27 to 1-12 margin against Westmeath in showery conditions in Mullingar, albeit two rapid-fire goals deep into injury-time gave a false impression of the battling display by the home team.

The Tribesmen were three points to the good in as many minutes courtesy of Cianan Fahy, Brian Concannon and Liam Collins. Westmeath lost their marquee defender Tommy Doyle after a bang of the sliotar in the head in the eighth minute, a major blow given the absence of their star forward Killian Doyle.

In the latter's absence, Niall O'Brien was on free-taking duty and he had a mixed afternoon from placed balls.

Henry Shefflin's charges were 0-05 to 0-00 up before their opponents struck for a hat-trick of unanswered points from the sticks of Jack Galvin, Kevin Regan, and O'Brien (a free). Westmeath's fourth point came from Galway native Davy Glennon (whose brother Ronan lined out for the winners) and the Connacht side led by 0-10 to 0-04 when Ciaran Doyle, a twin brother of the absent Killian, did well to get in a one-handed strike for a tonic goal for the team under the tutelage of Joe Fortune, who was booked in the 25th minute.

It was 0-12 to 1-04 in Galway's favour when Concannon rifled home a great goal from a tight angle with exactly 35 minutes on the clock. With Conor Cooney bagging four points from play in the first moiety and Evan Niland converting six placed balls, including a ninth-minute '65, Galway led by 1-14 to 1-05 at the interval.

A classy point from play by O'Brien was an encouraging start to the second half for Westmeath, but Galway were always able to pick off points when needed. Indeed, they ended up with 13 different scorers on