Enda McEvoy: Shefflin controlled the controllables — now Galway must learn to do the same

If Shefflin didn’t already know what he was letting himself in for he does now. We’re not in Ballyhale, any more, Toto.
Enda McEvoy: Shefflin controlled the controllables — now Galway must learn to do the same

Leaning into the pain: Galway manager Henry Shefflin after the Leinster GAA Hurling Senior Championship Final match between Galway and Kilkenny at Croke Park in Dublin. Pic: Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile

The money shot in the Leinster hurling final materialised not ten minutes afterwards, following the winning manager’s triumphal procession of half the field, but three or four minutes from the end when the RTÉ cameras zeroed in on his opposite number.

There was Henry Shefflin standing on the sideline as though turned to stone. Looking hunted. Looking haunted. The real money shot.

Although there’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face, here was a man on whom a grand piano had just landed from a great height. This was what he’d come to Galway for? And only two and a bit more years of it to go?

In a contest that shouldn’t have taken a lot of winning the favourites had been outpointed, outhustled and – surely most galling of all for the boss - outfought. In a summer that has provided well contested affairs and blowouts in about equal measure, nothing and nobody has constituted a bigger letdown, Waterford’s unravelling apart, than Shefflin’s troops second time around against his native county.

Croke Park a fortnight ago was the round robin meeting in Salthill viewed through the other end of the telescope. Galway were now the team with wind advantage on the resumption, were near enough both at the interval and deep into the second half to raise a winning spurt if good enough – and turned out to be not remotely good enough.

The ironies sang. Behold a man who had built the winningest career in the annals of the sport based not on wizardry but on practicality. Mensa-level game intelligence, lucid decision making, an earthquake-proof temperament after his personal Greg Kennedy debacle in 2001 and a gift for raising simplicity to nigh-on an art form. Shefflin controlled the controllables. He did the basics quickly and cleanly and he did them over and over again. He certainly didn’t miss handy chances.

All the things that his team hadn’t, weren’t and didn’t do two weeks ago.

In the space of six minutes midway through the second half, with a puck of the ball separating the contestants, Conor Cooney had four bites at narrowing the gap. The first three he put wide at the near upright, the third of them a handy free. In injury time, with the envelope closed and sealed, Cooney would put a free wide on the other side.

We take it for granted that modern freetakers are metronomes that never cease ticking; it is no harm to be reminded every now and then that they are composed of flesh and blood. Yet the big players make the big plays and the best players pierce the bullseye when it matters most.

If Shefflin didn’t already know what he was letting himself in for he does now. We’re not in Ballyhale, with a choice of TJ Reid, Colin Fennelly, Adrian Mullen and Eoin Cody as instant and supremely effective relievers of pains and headaches, any more, Toto.

And you may ask yourself, “Well, how did I get here?” 

Quite.

In the immediate aftermath of the match one felt ever more inclined to sing a hallelujah, out of sheer relief as much as anything else, for Micheál Donoghue and 2017. Now that the passing of a fortnight has allowed for a degree of perspective, Galway folk have grounds for guarded optimism today.

Most tight games are lost, and lost through bad habits, rather than won. Galway played not on the edge against Kilkenny but over it and – worse – over it in a petty, hamfisted manner. This is easily rectifiable.

Half of the points they conceded accrued from frees. (Conceding frees for TJ Reid to take. What could possibly go wrong?) Again, with a modicum of reasonably rigorous defensive coaching, easily rectifiable.

Eoin Murphy, whose performance has been a tad oversold, was obliged to be merely solid rather than spectacular; again and again the Galway forwards took either one step too many or one step too few. And Brian Concannon regressed from 0-4 in Salthill to 0-0 in Croke Park; Conor Whelan, a lawnmower in human form, cannot do everything by himself for all that he made a fine fist of attempting it.

Only Shefflin knows whether he misjudged the depth of his adopted county’s playing resources. But time may well tell that the 2022 Leinster final will be to him what the aforementioned 2001 All Ireland semi-final was for Brian Cody.

A wake-up call, an eyeopener, a painful but ultimately profitable lesson. You’d believed that training had gone well. You’d presumed that you could trust in this guy and that guy. You discovered in car-crash slow motion that everything you’d assumed was wrong.

If Cork haven’t quite reinvented themselves they are at least undertaking their housekeeping chores with far greater purpose than in April, having belatedly discovered the profits that can result from doing esoteric stuff like getting bodies around and over the sliotar when it’s in one’s own half of the field. (Who knew?!) Events at Casement Park seven days ago can be ignored. The only requirement, as ever in such circumstances, was to do the gig and get home without making eejits of themselves.

Antrim hit 2-19. The two goals give pause for cogitation. A little more cohesion than against Kilkenny, a little more care when it comes to the final ball, and the Galway forwards are capable of two or more goals here. The only place defensive fortifications were erected overnight was in Berlin.

If the sides are neck and neck entering the closing ten minutes the moment will beckon for Conor Lehane to step forward. The big players and the big plays, remember. What’s more, Cork are overdue a championship win against Galway.

On an afternoon where no outcome will represent even the mildest surprise, the double draw included, Kieran Kingston’s men possess momentum and, unlike six weeks ago, a grasp of what they’re supposed to be doing. Assuming they don’t offer a boulevard down the middle of their defence for Whelan to bowl through, that should suffice to separate the pair.

DROP CAP 

Sherlock Holmes, come on down. When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

So. We can be sure that if Clare play as well as they did in the Munster final they’ll beat Wexford. Given that this is patently impossible in view of the fortnight’s turnaround, the only question that remains concerns how large a degree of performance droop they can sustain while still doing enough to beat Wexford. After hurling brilliantly and losing, hurling badly and winning will be just fine and dandy.

One can only imagine how many kinds of anathema the bottom line against Limerick was to their manager’s proud spirit. Brian Lohan may have eventually come to terms with it and accepted it as a one-off; he won’t want it to become a two-off and his experience of the summer of 1998 will have been a help to his team during the fallout of the past fortnight.

(An episode scarcely edified, incidentally, by some politician – and let’s not give these people any further oxygen by naming them – calling for Clare to withdraw from the championship. Lohan, as if the poor man didn’t have enough to worry about, must have been thrilled.) The off-stage racket didn’t get to Lohan 24 years ago; it did get to some of his colleagues. He’ll have taken good care to try and protect his flock from the fallout from this particular Munster final. The overruling of the suspensions at least prevented the saga dragging on into the second half of the week; the downside is that the Banner have been deprived of a cause today. Nothing like a cause for keeping a team on a permanent war footing.

According to that fabled hurling abacus, the McEvoy Points From Play Rule of Thumb, potential All-Ireland champions should be sourcing no more than around 25 per cent of their scores from placed balls. Clare are running at 72 per cent from play: impressive, even if the figure is bloated by the turkey shoot against Waterford.

There are reasons why the 2022 MacCarthy Cup winners will hail from Munster rather than Leinster. One of them is the heavier artillery of the battalions down south. (Another is that Limerick are still better than everyone else.) While the spotlight on Clare may not be a slight on Wexford it does serve to undervalue their chances. A number of the Wexford players have lost three quarter-finals to these opponents, the first two due to defensive self-strangulation, the third after finding themselves 11 points at the end of the opening quarter. When will payback time arrive if it doesn’t arrive today?

Darragh Egan’s charges will sink or swim on the basis not of whatever tally they confine Tony Kelly to but of whatever tally they confine his colleagues to. Contrary to the truism that opponents “can’t legislate for Kelly”, in fact they can. Let him off, accept he’ll score a certain number of points from out the field, swallow hard and ensure the other lads don’t push Clare over the quota. As Limerick accomplished vis a vis Peter Duggan and Shane O’Donnell, both of whom can and must do better than they did 13 days ago.

For all the virtues and values that Liam Ryan and D O’Keeffe and Lee Chin never fail to bring to the table, the question about Wexford every day they take the field surrounds their likelihood of compiling a matchwinning total themselves. They should go close here. Then we’ll see what Clare have left in the tank.

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