Disgruntled Galvin gives Cork both barrels
PAUL GALVIN has stoked the flames between Kerry and Cork for the 2011 season by claiming Cork would have won an All-Ireland before this year if they were good enough.
In a TV documentary about the 2009 footballer of the year to be aired on RTÉ1 tonight, Galvin expresses his disgruntlement with the media’s fixation with Cork during 2010.
He also blames the Cork camp for contributing to the case against him following his sending off with Eoin Cadogan in last February’s National League Division One game in Páirc Uí Rinn, which saw both players pick up red cards but Galvin incur a eight-week suspension for a similar red card offence in the space of 48 weeks.
However, Galvin’s comments about the Rebels are sure to fuel the rivalry between the counties going into the new season. In one scene, he shakes his head watching The Sunday Game before the Munster semi-final when pundits Anthony Tohill and Kevin McStay extol Cork.
Speaking before Cork’s triumph last September, Galvin said: “I don’t know what this obsession with Cork and winning All-Irelands is. If they’re good enough to win it they would have won one by now. I’m getting sick of it. You’d swear they were the team that beat us in the final last year.
“Tyrone are a great team, Kerry are a great team but I don’t think until a team goes and wins a couple of All-Irelands you can call them a great team. They’ve lost two All-Irelands (finals). I’ve lost two All-Irelands. We’ll see. If they’re good enough to win one, they’ll win it.”
Galvin explains the Central Competitions Control Committee’s case against him for the Páirc Uí Rinn incident was in his mind flawed because he didn’t strike Cadogan during their tussle.
“I was reported for striking; I didn’t strike anybody,” insisted Galvin. “The guy (Cadogan) on the Cork side got reported for striking as well but he didn’t strike me either. You watch the video of that game you can see clearly before that incident (Kieran) Donaghy and Donncha (Walsh) tackle him, he (Cadogan) gets a bang on his mouth, he holds his mouth.
“A couple of minutes later, there’s a doctor on the field treating him for a mouth injury and the inference was there that it was me (who caused it). He was treated for his tooth long before that happened.
“I thought I behaved responsibly in Cork. I tried to get him off me as quickly as I could and just get away from the situation because here I am, 30 years old, in front of the stand in Páirc Uí Rinn in February in a league game and I’m on the ground grappling with a guy.
“Straight away, the minute it happened, I was like ‘Oh no, I do not need this to be happening now’ so I just tried to get away from him as quickly as I could.”
Speaking after that sending off, Galvin said he was dependent on “the integrity of opponents and other teams” following the incident because he felt his season would be over if he was sent off again.
“If you go by what happened in Cork where a guy runs at me and jumps on me and pulls me to the ground and the two of us get a red card what’s to stop the next guy doing it in June or July hitting the deck beside me, the referee puts two and two together and gets five and off I go. My year is finished.”
However, he admitted the second altercation with Cadogan in the Munster SFC semi-final replay in Páirc Uí Chaoimh was all of his own making.
“I’m completely brain-dead to do what I did,” he conceded. “My hand was here, he was shouting in my face and I was (makes a gun gesture with his fingers to his head)... stupid. I fecking stuck my finger in his mouth. It was a complete defence mechanism.”
Galvin didn’t appeal the suspension but says he was still fuming over the February incident with Cadogan and the way he believed Cork trumped up the injury he is alleged to have inflicted upon the Cork defender.
“I don’t think there was any point defending it because you can’t defend it. If I was wrong, I’m wrong. I was just p***ed off with the same guy who I was sent off with in February and I still was really annoyed about the whole incident and the suspension that followed it and some of the stuff that came out of the Cork camp subsequent to that incident.”
GALVIN reveals he didn’t see The Sunday Game the evening of the second incident and has no intention of watching it, a programme which he says features “three or four of them (analysts) you can throw a blanket over... they’ve two All-Ireland medals between them all”.
He also reveals provincial clashes with Cork don’t interest him as much as they used to.
“Munster games to me in the last few years have been a pain in the a***. They are strange kind of games. Some of the games Cork have been out the gap, we’ve struggled against them and f*** it, you just want to get out of there.”
Galvin admits he had a bad feeling on the day of Kerry’s All-Ireland quarter-final defeat to Down and “knew it (the game) was gone at half-time“.
He added: “I was still very shocked. It was a kind of a numb feeling. You feel like a bit of a p****. If my team-mates felt like I let them down it would be hard to blame them,” he said. “If Jack (O’Connor) felt that way it would be hard to blame him.”
“Galvinised” will be screened tonight on RTE1 at 9.35pm
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