Galway executive hold all the aces

A tip of the hat to the Galway management committee. Nobody, dare it be said not even some of their own, thought it would last this long. That they would succeed in bringing the players to the negotiating table as often as they have this month is a remarkable achievement. Their will to have it out, it seems, is stronger than the 2015 panel to have Anthony Cunningham ousted.

Why else, pray tell, would the players be so obliging? Like Mayo’s footballers, they too have reached two All-Ireland finals in the last four seasons but, in stark contrast to their fellow bridesmaid neighbours, Mayo weren’t willing to hear anyone out. With a brother of Noel Connelly as county chairman and their liaison officer, it was unlikely they would reach an outcome reasonable to them via arbitration, but then family ties between officialdom and management are almost as entwined in Galway.

The Mayo squad’s show of strength in MacHale Park on the night of October 1 was a page right out of the Cork hurlers’ strike book in January 2009, when they appeared en masse in front of the media in the Maryborough Hotel. In both situations, the players were expressing their unity. A chain only being as strong as its weakest link and all that.