Donegal v Galway Preview: If we accept that the Bank of Ireland Connacht championship tells us little enough about Galway, the unveiling of this year's model at Croke Park last week was worrying for the county.
Within the Galway camp there has been resentment over some of the criticisms directed at the team after the drawn match. But these were simply a function of the team's perennial status in recent years as All-Ireland contenders.
Judged by the highest standards, Galway were much less impressive than any of the three counties that have made it to the semi-finals. Tomorrow evening's replay is therefore a crisis point for the team. They must win and do so with sufficient style to rebuild confidence in their overall credentials.
There are good reasons for believing they can accomplish the first of these requirements. The long break since the provincial final - four weeks - has been bridged and the team will be expected to be sharper, which erodes some of the advantage of Donegal's more active timetable during July.
Secondly Galway can take comfort from the fact that teams with the greater room for improvement generally win replays. With five of the six forwards under-performing last weekend, Galway certainly have scope for dramatic improvement. And they will have had time to work out an antidote to Donegal's packing of defence and the ultra-conservative placement of John Gildea behind the half backs.
The negative interpretation - from Galway's point of view - of the drawn match concerns how much has been taken out of the top players by what is now six years on the road.
There was some scepticism about the four-week break being a plausible excuse. After all, match practice isn't going to radically improve Michael Donnellan's fitness levels, make Kevin Walsh any younger or reignite Padhraic Joyce's scoring power.
Walsh's heroics in the second half and his long-range points in particular obscured the difficulty he experienced at centrefield in the first half and the apparent difficulty he has tuning in to new goalkeeper Brian Donoghue's kick-outs.
Donegal will be more confident after a battling underdog performance and particularly encouraged at the success of their strategy of crowding out the approaches to goal and denying Galway's runners the space to make ground.
They will also reflect on the ease with which they pulled Galway apart in the first half, the chaos in the Connacht champions' defence as Donegal pulled five points clear and the stark suggestion that a few more scores might have finished it before half-time.
Brian McEniff's year has been greatly disrupted by injury to key players. Tomorrow he goes with Damien Diver despite the player having a broken bone in his hand and Brendan Devenney despite the manager's own assessment that the forward is performing at only 80 per cent.
The spirits that have been raised in the camp will be tempered by caution given last year's experience when a morale-lifting draw with Dublin transformed into a replay trimming.
Aside from the indiscipline that undermined that display, Donegal's problems stemmed from an inability to win the sort of possession around the middle that had made them competitive the first day.
Galway will concentrate on improving their centrefield yield and try to protect the defence a bit more than they managed last Sunday. Their half-back line is a bit lopsided, with Seán de Paor likely to be again missing with injury.
His experience was missed as Richie Fahey struggled to come to terms with the wide-open territory created by Declan Meehan's need to follow Paul McGonigle out the field.
At the back, only Gary Fahey looked comfortable throughout and his marking of Donegal's best forward, Adrian Sweeney, was a miracle of economy. Even though Sweeney had three wides from play as well as his point, Fahey's careful hustle contributed to the full forward's inability to find even the minimal time and space he needs to swing over points.
The decisive improvement expected from Galway will hinge on the need to devise roles for Joyce and Matthew Clancy that will optimise their contributions, finding space for Clancy to run and Joyce to shoot as well as bringing Micheál Meehan's luminous talents to bear.
This match has gone out of the "definite" column for Galway and into a more ambiguous category. But manager John O'Mahony will have learned plenty from last week, studying Donegal's tactics, and should be able to implement a sufficient improvement to reach the semi-final against Armagh.
1 T Blake
2 N McCready 3 R Sweeney 4 D Diver
15 M Meehan 14 P Joyce 13 D Savage
5 S Carr 6 B Monaghan 7 K Cassidy
12 M Donnellan 11 M Clancy 10 P Clancy
8 J Gildea 9 S McDermott
9 J Bergin 8 K Walsh
10 C Toye 11 M Hegarty 12 P McGonigle
7 K Brady 6 R Fahey 5 D Meehan
13 B Roper 14 A Sweeney 15 B Devenney
4 M Comer 3 G Fahey 2 K Fitzgerald
1 B Donoghue
Probable Galway team n Donegal in bold
