Pat Spillane Jr counting cost of injury in condensed calendar

Pat Spillane Jr is watching enviously as his Sligo team-mates prepare for another crack at Galway in the Connacht semi-final.

The Yeats County had a somewhat unusual path to the decider last year, beating London and New York before suffering a 14-point beating at the hands of the Tribesmen.

Tony McEntee's side avoided what many saw as a potential banana skin with a comfortable win over Leitrim last weekend and are hopeful of closing the gap on Galway when they meet again on Saturday week.

But the Kerry native will be on the sidelines as he continues to recover from a league-curtailing groin injury, something that he feels is a bigger challenge in the condensed split-season calendar.

"Unfortunately, I'm looking at another couple of weeks out now," he told RTÉ Sport at the launch of the AIB GAA Football Championship.

"It has been a frustrating couple of weeks. I was delighted to see the lads get the result the last day, it was a strong performance.

"It was sort of a load-induced injury so it was a hard one to manage given the amount of games coming at us.

"It is what it is. Every county is dealing with it, a lot of players are dealing with it. I'm fortunate that it's not a serious injury and I'll be back to see game time this year.

"I'm buzzing to get back. I'm nearing the end of the rehab process now, thank God, hopefully I'll be alright for the group stages."

What can Sligo do differently against Galway this time around?

"We played quite well for 20 minutes and a couple of errors really turned the game on its head. They were self-inflicted and led to a couple of goals.

"The game fell away from us [then[] but we'll take confidence that we can play against these teams when we're at our best.

"We'll need to be a lot sharper than we