Galway selector Tom Helebert felt Fergal Moore's early injury halted the Tribesmen momentum, during the Tribesmen's Allianz Hurling League Division 1 semi-final loss to Kilkenny at Semple Stadium this afternoon.

The reigning Leinster champions, who had already beaten Kilkenny in the group stages started brightly and led by 1-2 to 0-3 after eight minutes, before a lengthy delay due to Moore's injury.

"It was a disappointing finish," Helebert said.

"We were targeting to make it a hot contest. We had a very good start and we certainly turned up with the right frame of mind and the right start, but we didn't sustain it.

"Obviously losing Fergal as we did and the disruption it brought did have an impact.

"I'm not going to pin our loss on that incident alone, but it did interfere with the way things were and critically in the second half they did defend in bunches around the goal and we found it very hard to get through.

"We got our chance to win the game with two or three very good goal chances in the first half, but we only converted one. We didn't finish out two good chances and against Kilkenny you need too.

"Fergal is gone to Clonmel hospital with concussion suspected at this point in time," Helebert said.

"It was hard hit and he went in fully committed to the tackle and unfortunately he did some damage to himself.

"It's purely precautionary at this stage." Tweet

Most Read Stories