Live long enough and you'll walk into a Connacht team's dressingroom on All-Ireland final day and see the Sam Maguire sitting on the table. Chances are that John O'Mahony will be somewhere nearby.

He lives in a town straddling county borders and his achievements straddle Connacht football history in the same manner. O'Mahony's managerial wanderings have brought provincial title windfalls to Mayo, Leitrim and now Galway. He jousts at his own private windmills but the brand of football he deploys at every stop is the same.

He has just brought another team back to the All-Ireland final, hoping to close the circle which began nine years ago when his Mayo team left an All-Ireland final behind them in Croke Park. That's personal stuff however. Football games are nuts and bolts problems.

"There was good closing down today," he says. "The modern game is all about that and we did that well. I haven't had time to absorb it all yet. There were certain mistakes we made. Ray Silke will be out practising his frees. It's a learning experience, though. There is an awful lot of improving to be done. We're in an All-Ireland and that's all we could ask at this stage. Nice to sit back and relax and get ready for the final."

This was an uncommon sort of Connacht performance. Only sentimental sorts rated Galway's chances against a Derry team yesterday. Galway teams generally fold like deckchairs when they travel east of the Shannon. Yet the team who produced an extravaganza of bad shooting in the Connacht final had no wides from play yesterday. They rebuffed every Derry comeback and then heaped derision and scorn upon the heads of the wise folk who said they could only play on fine days. In the press box we chewed our hats.

O'Mahony's team had sprung back into shape again and again as Derry struggled to find that grinding power which has served them so well down the years. It was a strange sight to see the McKeever brothers fluently conceding frees throughout the game as Galway ran among them like dogs worrying sheep.

"There's a lot of good things about the team," said O'Mahony, "and pace is one of them. We tried to utilise our strengths. There are an awful lot of people working in the background trying to get all the minutiae right and I'm absolutely thrilled for all of them."

Down the corridor Kevin Walsh braces his large frame against a cool concrete wall and says goodbye to the world as he drowns under a sea of microphones, notebooks and hackfaces. He gives a soundbite recap of the game: "We got ahead early and it was very hard for them to get back. They were chasing the game the whole way."

We want to know what a man who was being sent off to Lourdes during the week was doing in Croke Park on Sunday toughing it out with the unsympathetic Anthony Tohill. Walsh, carried off in the Connacht final, bounced back with biblical vigour yesterday.

"It was tested Wednesday night but I had to go through another run last night to prove myself. I had no training done in the meantime. I was slightly tired in the first half coming up towards the end, fatigue that was all."

If there is a downside to the novel shape of the championship as it stands today it is the prospect of the speechmaking on All-Ireland day. Ray Silke's world-record acceptance speech of four and three quarter hours (plus song) after Corofin won the All-Ireland club title was eclipsed last month when Glen Ryan spoke for half a day (plus song) after Kildare's Leinster title win.

(Where are these guys when the GAA actually needs somebody to clear people off the pitch?)

Silke was in his customary modest and genial form yesterday evening not looking at all like a man on the cusp of Galway history. Only Tony Hanahoe and Billy Morgan have captained teams to club and county All-Irelands in the same year.

"It's been said to me that I'm not much good at Gaelic football," smiled Silke, "but I'm fairly lucky. So, as the captain, that's kind of helping at this stage."

He placed Galway's desperate need in the context of generations of failure.

"Obviously Kildare or Kerry will start the final as favourites. Today was kind of the forgotten semi-final. Mayo have come up here two years in a row but unless a Connacht team wins an All-Ireland final we'll still be the paupers of Gaelic football."

Eamonn Coleman was buzzing in and out of the Derry dressingroom so freely and energetically that it felt like we had slipped through some hole in time. The wee man hopped about and fidgeted, his reputation as the most successful Derry manager still in tact for another year at least.

The Derry players had spilled out quickly through the Croke Park escape hatches, leaving Henry Downey behind to gather the questions and explain the torpor which had crippled his team.

"Galway started well," he said, "settled better, found their rhythm quicker, their forward line was working well, better than ours, we were very cramped up front. The referee was blowing us for overcarrying the ball. He seemed to favour the player who was diving on the ball."

The early stages of the game had been a staccato procession punctuated incessantly by the referee's whistle. Derry's performance was too bad to be blamed on official fussiness but on a bad day it was another wrinkle.

"I was disappointed," said Downey, "I thought that the penalty decision that he did give was making up for the penalty that he should have given earlier. I thought Anthony Tohill was hauled back. I know he's a strong man but probably if a smaller player had gone in like that a decision would have been given right away.

"I thought it was a harsh decision and the penalty he did give towards the end was of no consequence at that stage.

"To be fair, though, we didn't play well enough. We had our chances at times when we had Galway pinned back but we missed chances - Joe Brolly's goal chance to put us within a point or level. Galway weathered the storm when we were on top and that's what brought them through."

"When Kieran McKeever got sent off it made it easier for them. Sean de Paor dropped back and played as a loose man in defence and it was very hard to hit our men in the full forward line."

For his part, Brian Mullins departed with a gruff haiku to the effect that he was disappointed and that the better team had won.

End of story.