{"id":334401,"date":"2026-03-07T21:39:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T21:39:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/334401\/"},"modified":"2026-03-07T21:39:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T21:39:09","slug":"free-scoring-galway-maul-cats-in-salthill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/334401\/","title":{"rendered":"Free-scoring Galway maul Cats in Salthill"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Thirteen players hit the target as Galway hammered Kilkenny in their Allianz Hurling Division 1A clash at Pearse Stadium with an awesome display of point scoring.<\/p>\n<p>Derek Lyng&#8217;s men, who will be back in Salthill for the opening round of the Leinster championship in six weeks, just had no answer as Aaron Niland led the onslaught with 0-13 in front of a crowd of 5,467.<\/p>\n<p>Galway, having opted to play against the breeze, got on top in most positions and led by 0-15 to 0-09 at the end of the opening half with Aaron Niland leading the way.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\" Rory Burke of Galway scores a point from a sideline ball v Kilkenny - 2026 Allianz League\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/002403e2-614.jpg\"\/><br \/>\nRory Burke of Galway scoring a point from a sideline ball<\/p>\n<p>The Clarinbridge sharpshooter was entrusted with free-taking duties and landed 0-09 in the opening half, two of them from play, one a 65 and the rest from frees.<\/p>\n<p>The Clarinbridge sharpshooter was entrusted with free-taking duties and landed 0-09 in the opening half, two of them from play, one a 65 and the rest from frees.<\/p>\n<p>Their attack, constantly switching positions, stretched the Kilkenny defence and the scores flowed, leading by 0-06 to 0-02 after nine minutes after Niland landed four in a row.<\/p>\n<p>Cian Kenny, who hit three from play and two frees in the opening half, kept Kilkenny in touch but they trailed by double scores at 0-10 to 0-05 after 19 minutes with Tom Monaghan and Cathal Mannion picking off some fine scores.<\/p>\n<p>Jordan Molloy landed a superb point from the right for Kilkenny but Niland matched with a superbly judged effort from the right touchline into the wind.<\/p>\n<p>Two Kenny points inside a minute cut the gap to four ten minutes from the break but Galway hit the next three with two more from Niland and one from Monaghan extended the lead before a Kenny free reduced the gap to two goals at the break.<\/p>\n<p>Galway dominated after the restart and reeled off 0-7 without reply by the 45th minute with Niland adding three more, and Mannion, Burke, Tiernan Killeen and Ronan Glennon also finding the target.<\/p>\n<p>John Donnelly, Tom Phelan and Kenny responded for Kilkenny but Galway were never troubled and pushed the lead out to ten points, 0-23 to 0-13, at the end of the third quarter.<\/p>\n<p>They continued to pick off points from there to the end with Conor Cooney becoming their 13th player to score when he landed the final point in stoppage time.<\/p>\n<p>Galway: Darach Fahy; Cillian Trayers, Joshua Ryan, Kieran Hanrahan; Ronan Glennon (0-01), Padraic Mannion (0-01), Darren Morrissey; Cian Daniels, Tirernan Killeen (0-01); Darragh Neary, Cathal Mannion (0-06), Rory Burke (0-04, 0-01 sideline); Tom Monaghan (0-02), Conor Whelan (0-02), Aaron Niland (0-13, 0-09f, 0-01&#8217;65).<\/p>\n<p>Subs: Jason Rabbitte (0-01) for Monaghan (53), Conor Cooney (0-01) for Neary (53), TJ Brennan (0-01) for Morrissey (58), Evan Niland (0-01) for Burke (62), Oisin Lohan (0-01) (Skehana-Mountbellew\/Moylough) for A Niland (63).<\/p>\n<p>Kilkenny: Aidan Tallis; Rory Garrett, Mikey Carey, Ivan Bolger; David Blanchfield, Darragh Corcoran, Paddy Deegan; Cian Kenny (0-10, 0-4f), Jordan Molloy (0-01); Liam Moore (0-02), Eoin Cody (0-02), Luke Connellan; Niall Shortall, Mossy Keoghan, Tom Phelan (0-01).<\/p>\n<p>Subs: John Donnelly (0-01) for Connellan (29), Ian Byrne for Moore (34-36), Killian Doyle for Shortall (36), Richie Reid for Deegan (45), Shane Murphy for Carey (48), Byrne for Molloy (53).<\/p>\n<p>Referee: Colm Lyons (Cork).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thirteen players hit the target as Galway hammered Kilkenny in their Allianz Hurling Division 1A clash at Pearse&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":334402,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-334401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=334401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334401\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/334402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=334401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=334401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=334401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}