Six-day recovery will pose challenge

One of the biggest challenges facing the Dublin and Galway management teams is the six-day turnaround to their Leinster championship replay.

Players will be tired mentally and physically after Sunday’s game. It wasn’t that the match was particularly fast or that there was huge physicality in the exchanges however it was a big step up from the league as championship hurling brings a tension that isn’t experienced at any stage in the spring — even if you get to the final.

Players will have picked up little knocks and have sore muscles. Rest and recuperation will be crucial this week.

The more rapid the recovery the greater the advantage. And Dublin manager Ger Cunningham is already a step ahead here. When the game ended his team sped off to DCU, a mere 10 minutes from Croke Park and had a pool recovery session, injury treatment and their after match meal. The players would then have had a short drive home. Galway’s base in the Regency Hotel, a similar distance from the match venue, would have afforded them similar facilities but unlike their opponents they then had to face a considerable journey west.

However Galway boss Anthony Cunningham was involved in two quick turnarounds last season and he is bound to have learned from those.

Managing a week between championship games is always difficult. It is easy to fall into the trap of attempting to correct all the faults thrown up by the game DVD. This leads to more time spent on the field further encroaching on resting and such work could also burn up some player enthusiasm. Less is more in this situation and concentrating on one or two major areas that need attention might prove more beneficial come Saturday.

Galway might look at their missed goal chances but credit must also go to Dublin ‘keeper Alan Nolan who stood up well to the shots making himself big on a few occasions. But better options had been available to the Galway forwards. Identifying these and practising them will help increase the awareness of what is needed if they find themselves in similar territory again.

Anthony Cunningham should get his hands on the footage from behind the goals and have an astute hurling analyst begin the process of coordinating the Galway attack in search of goals.

Joe Canning would be central to this strategy. Canning worked hard last Sunday and covered back into his defence on many occasions but they need to get him on the ball in threatening areas as often as they can.

Joe needs no help with the skills of the game but he needs help in his support runs. This is not Joe’s fault — he is a product of his phenomenal hurling youth where the philosophy was “give Joe the ball and he’ll win the game”.

At times he runs towards his colleagues as they move forward with the ball and he ends up outside the play, making life easy for defenders. This is akin to Lionel Messi running back towards the centre circle when his team mates are running at the opposing defence. Knowing where to run a support line and crucially when to begin that run is a powerful tool in an attacker’s armoury. Canning needs some help in this area and a week isn’t enough time to make an appreciable difference in his overall movement but better goal awareness and even slightly better support runs might be the first step this weekend.

Dublin might look at their methods of supplying their inside forwards when pressure is applied in the middle third of the pitch as happened in their league semi-final against Cork and again on Sunday.

In the first half of both games Mark Schutte was well supplied. Neither Cork or Galway closed down the providers who were given time to deliver quality ball inside. Schutte’s seven possessions in the first half on Sunday were responsible for six points, a phenomenal return.

In the second half he scored an excellent point three minutes in. His next possession was seven minutes later when, left with no other option, he shot a wide from an awkward angle. From there to the finish, (27 minutes in total), Schutte wasn’t supplied with one quality ball.

In any military campaign good supply routes are essential for success. Padraig Mannion marked him tightly after half time and Galway contested things with more vigour around the middle third. This is a major deficiency in their play. Solving it could be key for the Dubs. And not just this Saturday but for their season.