JOE KERNAN has orchestrated a few famous comebacks in his years, but this appeared to have surpassed the lot.

“Let me sit down for a minute, boys,” he says, before explaining how – if that’s possible – his Galway team had managed to close down a nine-point deficit, with 14 men, against a Sligo team that looked more than a little intent on making the final.

“It certainly wasn’t scripted that way,” starts Kernan, “and we’d be very disappointed with the way we performed. The eight weeks without a competitive match had a big bearing on ourselves.

“But the big plus is we didn’t throw in the towel. It would have been easy. We were making a load of mistakes. Kicking a load of wides. A lot of them easy enough.

“But the boys stuck it. The boys made one goal chance, and we took it. That’s what this game is all about. Not quitting.”

We all thought Galway were gone – and Kernan did too.

“It looked like it. But I like to instil that in all teams. It’s never over until it’s over. We still have a lot of work to do.

“Pádraig Joyce was being fouled off the ball all the time and nobody seemed to see. But he’s one of the greatest players the game has seen over the last 10 or 15 years. He’s lethal when he gets a chance.

“We’ll lift ourselves now. We’ve that game under our belt now. But we have to improve. That match, though, will bring us on. Our heads are going to be lifted coming out of here. There’s still fight in these guys.”

Sligo manager Kevin Walsh, as you would expect, looked far more disappointed. In fact, he looked like he’d just seen a ghost as he tried to come to terms with how – if that’s possible – his Sligo team had managed to surrender a nine-point advantage.

“Yeah, we’d be disappointed that we didn’t take it home with us,” said Walsh. “We all know the game is 75 or 76 minutes long and that’s what it was today.

“They might have scored 1-3 in five minutes or so – if that had come at the start of the second half we’d be hanging on anyway.

“We’re back in Markievicz Park, still in the championship, so there’s a sense of ‘it’s left behind us’, but that will be gone by tomorrow morning.”

Walsh has enormous respect within the Sligo panel, and reckoned his team can lift it again.

“They’ve had to lift it on numerous occasions during the league. I know from the outside you might be thinking it’s only division three, but there were times when they had to lift it in the middle of games during the year. It was always going to be a huge ask for us to win a Connacht title, but we’re still in the middle of it.”

Yet, there’s no denying Sligo had chances to win it, late on too: “Our right half back had one, the corner back had one. David Kelly fisted a ball off the post.”