Sceptics await moment of truth

There was, as a once-popular Scandinavian quartet might have put it, something in the air that night.

It was the evening of July 9 last year and Galway had done a number on Cork in the All-Ireland qualifiers at the Gaelic Grounds. Ten points from Joe Canning, 1-3 from Damien Hayes and, after a slow start, a 12-point victory. It was the county’s most impressive championship display of John McIntyre’s tenure and the buzz on the bus homewards was palpable. This, the players and management sensed, could be the start of something big.

Then they went to Thurles a fortnight later and being who they were — the country’s most reliably unreliable team — proceeded to calve against Waterford in the quarter-final. A shocking performance and a wholly unsurprising performance. Galway at their most infuriatingly Galwayesque.