Tribesmen’s tour de force is just the starting point

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Now that we’ve all had a bit more time to register last Sunday when we were all so impressed as well as shocked by Galway, there’s a temptation now to be somewhat sceptical of them.

That if they lose their All Ireland semi-final next month, then Sunday was just a waste of time, another false dawn in the tradition of the previous ambushes of Kilkenny in 2001 and 2005, and the forgotten league victories of 2000, 2004 and 2010.

Or that even if they were even to win that semi-final but lose in September, most likely to Kilkenny, they’d rue the day they stirred the monster.

That they have to go the whole way now, simple as, to distinguish them from all other Galway teams since 1988.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

There is something markedly different about Galway this year. Under Anthony Cunningham, they’re no longer all about this year.

That’s not to say they’re not thinking in terms of winning it all now. They are, with Fergal Moore in his acceptance speech referring to being only halfway through their intended journey this year. But don’t be surprised if they’re a bit more private about their ambitions for the rest of the summer, and if Cunningham was to borrow Pat Gilroy’s term from 2010, that his team are now in “bonus territory” upon reaching the All-Ireland semi-final, because so much of what he’s doing now is based on the template Gilroy along with Jim McGuinness have applied in football.

If Cunningham’s only goal upon assuming the position of Galway manager was to win the 2012 All-Ireland title, then he would not have discarded so many veteran players last winter and instead retained them for one last push. He had the courage as well as the vision though to realise that big-squeeze, short-term mentality had repeatedly stifled Galway for decades.

Last year’s All-Ireland quarter-final defeat to Waterford for him was Galway’s startled earwigs moment, and unlike Gilroy who gave so many of the Dublin 2008 team that were hammered by Tyrone in an All-Ireland quarter-final another shot in 2009, he calculated some great servants had shipped at least one defeat too many and the team rebuilding process should start right away.

There’s now structure about Galway. Cunningham is still over the county U21 side. The intermediate team now acts as a development squad, comprised of 22 to 25 year-olds that will stay within the system; you won’t have that team bringing back a thirtysomething Niall Gilligan-like figure to try help them win an All-Ireland, as Clare did a couple of years back.

Nor will Galway just throw the youngsters into the senior team and see if they sink or swim. Niall Donoghue was exceptional for last year’s All-Ireland winning U21 team at full back. A more desperate, short-term-oriented manager would have him playing there right now. Cunningham knows he’s too young right now while too good not to play somewhere, so he’s playing at wing back.

It’s all about the bigger picture, the longer view, creating a culture whereby winning isn’t so much mandatory but inevitable. It’s about doing things the right way and the right results will then follow. Victory isn’t something you demand but deserve.

No one illustrates the point more than Joe Canning and comparing the photos of the jubilant and trim figure he cut last Sunday to the one after the Leinster two final two years ago: head bowed, bare-chested, overweight. Back then you couldn’t help but unfavourably compare him to the chiselled Henry Shefflin. Back in his St Kieran’s and early WIT days, Shefflin was, as Derek Lyng put it, “a lumpy type of fella who could put on weight easily”. Joe was still a lumpy fella up until this year. Now he’s discovered like Henry did a long time ago that you need to be an athlete to truly shine as a hurler.

It’s not unlike Michael Murphy and Donegal that way. To say Galway’s win last Sunday won’t really matter unless they go onto win in August or even September would be as silly as to dismiss Donegal’s Ulster title last year as no more meaningful than their 2007 league triumph because they didn’t go on to win the All-Ireland. Nearly everyone appreciated that Ulster title was the start, rather than the end, of something. McGuinness has a five-year plan for Donegal. That plan does not rule out winning the big one within the first two years but the point is he has a long-term plan for his county and so has Cunningham.

We don’t think Galway will win this year’s All-Ireland. There is still a 90% chance Kilkenny will still win it but the great thing about last Sunday was that there’s now a 90% chance we’ll at least have something other than another Kilkenny-Tipp final and that Galway have pronounced themselves as a serious force, not just for this year.

* kieranshannon@eircom.net

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