Why has Donoghue become the tinkerman?

Following three championship campaigns where the Galway management’s consistency of selection was near impeccable, the county’s hurling team no longer picks itself. More worrying still for followers of the maroon and white is that Micheál Donoghue appears to no longer know what is his strongest 15.

As the national anthem rang around Pearse Stadium prior to Galway and Wexford throwing in a fortnight ago, members of the press room were busy trying to identify which two players from the team printed in the match programme had been relegated to the bench. Seán Loftus and the returning Joseph Cooney, wearing number 18 and 24 respectively, were clearly visible on the 45-metre line where the Galway team stood to attention for ‘Amhrán na bhFiann’, meaning two named starters were not indeed starting.

Jack Grealish and Kevin Hussey were the pair to lose out, and when you factor in Ronan Burke and Davy Glennon, who also failed to hold onto their starting places from the Carlow game, it brought to four the number of changes from their opening day victory.

Four might not seem a terribly large figure to most onlookers, but for this Galway management, it represented the largest number of changes from one championship match to the next — within the same season — in the three and a half years they’ve been at the helm. Further context is that these personnel changes were made to a line-up, put out against Carlow, which contained just seven players from last year’s All-Ireland final team and nine players from the side which fell to Waterford in the league semi-final back in March.

That’s a fair amount of tinkering for a management who, last year, when you exclude the Dublin dead-rubber in Leinster, made just five changes across eight championship outings. Defence and midfield went unchanged from the Leinster final drawn game right through to the All-Ireland final, a total of five matches. It was the exact same story in 2017 for all but their Leinster opener away to Offaly.

In 2015, then manager Anthony Cunningham handed championship starts to 21 players. Micheál Donoghue brought that figure down to 19 in his first year in charge. It was lowered again in 2017, coming in at 18, while last year’s figure of 20 was relatively modest when you consider the bulked-up nature of the new format and the demand it placed on players.