Hard task making the cut with master Canning
Amongst this chaotic scene, however, one, particular, man is an island. While the team of coaches on the sideline watch these full-blooded practice sessions unfold on days when the season’s playbook is inked, there, invariably, wearing a brightly coloured cap, is the author of so much of it: the quarterback.
This orange hat, which crowns the QB, offers his enthusiastic and often bigger team-mates a very clear message: “Take it easy on this guy; he’s the franchise.”
Neither Galway, nor county champions Portumna, make Joe Canning wear a luminous cap – but everyone knows this guy is worth a few Superbowl rings to the Tribesmen.
It’s fair to say, the 21-year-old is the key to at last unlocking All-Ireland success. But not his year. The westerners, as we know, were dumped out of the championship – after an encouraging run, which began in the Leinster SHC – by Waterford who picked the victory from Canning and Co’s pocket in an All-Ireland quarter-final in Semple Stadium. Another year wasted.
But, despite his box-office name and his face now plastered on Dublin buses, the Portumna man is not one to swaddle himself in a burgeoning reputation, it seems. As he beats a familiar path – from his club’s dressing room to the centre of the well-worn pitch – he is half feeling his left shoulder while he inspects the balding surface underfoot.
The day before Canning is to teach me some broad-brush strokes in the art of the sideline cut, his club side take on Tipperary ahead of Sunday’s All-Ireland decider with Kilkenny. Essentially, it’s a chance for both sides to click through the gears in preparation for the real battles ahead. Not so for the LIT student who roars full throttle into a shoulder challenge with Premier County man-mountain Michael Webster. “I saw him coming and I thought ‘hang on now’. He’s a great player obviously. And a really big guy.” Canning comes off the worse in the crisp exchange. But he’s ready for a few sideline cuts nonetheless.
“I don’t practice that much really – maybe 20 minutes once a week you’d fire a few over. But you’d say you practice them all the time, you know,” he says as he leans over the sliotar which he places very deliberately (it’s the same position for every attempt, you might notice).
“I read books from sports people – Ronan O’Gara’s one was very good I thought and Jonny Wilkinson’s. The routine I go through is a bit like Wilkinson’s. And I do try to take what I can from other sports and apply that to my own game.”
We’re in the south-east of the county of Galway, the only bodies on a deserted pitch, but he could be under a full stand at Twickenham, trying to angle a conversion between the posts, such is the marked similarity of the routine. Two steps back from the ball. Two deep breaths. A quick glance at the posts – and a visualisation of the sliotar sailing over. He then kneels into his target, reaching low and flinging the hurley face – at a 45-degree angle, a fraction beneath the ball. He winces as his shoulder aches but the contact is painless and it floats gracefully towards the goals he’s played into as long as he’s played the game. “Now your turn,” he states.
After my first attempt skims along the grass towards the town, the Galway man asks casually, “You’re a soccer player, right?” A dirty stroke. When I ask how he isn’t laughing at my clumsy attempts, he insists no sideline cut expert scoffs at any effort; it could happen to anyone.
What’s the first sign of madness? Talking to yourself? Suggs and his bandmates walking up your driveway? Try, offering to stand in goal for a Joe Canning penalty. The anaemic grass in the goalmouth of both goals in Portumna’s pitch has been replaced with coarse astroturf. “The grass never got a chance to come through; especially in this goal,” explains Caning.
“Below in the far end, it’s just the square is replaced. Here it goes all the way out to the 20 because young fellas were coming in and playing in the near goals.
“Was I one those lads? I suppose I was for a long time.”
This local boy has fired a million arrows from a quiver he developed in this couple of acres of rural real estate. Never before has a journalist agreed to stand in his crosshairs.
Respecting his new opponent so much, he adopts a clever rope-a-dope tactic and takes it handy enough for the first few. I save at least three and tell him one stretched save, which the photographer captures, will be on Facebook within the hour. The next shot whizzes by my head like a missed deadline. And the next. I get to the last but it’s so powerful it knocks me over the line anyway. That one won’t be going up online.
This Sunday is a date circled in red on the calendar all year. Though Galway and their young star will not fill the role they had hoped on All-Ireland final day, Canning admits he’ll be in the stands anyway. As Michael Webster and his Tipperary team-mates run out onto the Croke Park pitch on Sunday, he’ll be in his civvies, with friends. “The Galway lads decided we’d go up as a group and support the minors. We can chill out a bit and relax together after a long year. Will I have a pint? No, we have a big championship game coming up with the club and there’ll be none of that.”
Galway supporters will hope he looks after himself between the sidelines in the meantime and returns to Jones’s Road next year for a champagne moment in September. This guy is certainly the franchise.
Contact: adrian.russell@examiner.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell
