Things looking bleak in Galway and Meath
Colm Cooper’s performance aside, we were treated to one of the most unremarkable football games in recent memory between the two sides.
As the mind drifted, I recalled some of the more memorable clashes between the two teams during the last decade and afterwards I overheard two Galway supporters dropping anchor in that last refuge of the defeated — the pity lounge.
Citing absence of players, disinterest amongst others and downright dearth of quality throughout the county, the dispirited duo reached the happy consensus that only for bad luck, they’d have no luck.
Having played a few years in the early 90s with Kerry, I recognised their gallows humour as the talk of a conquered team and a conquered people. Not a good place to be.
As difficult as it is to reconcile with the fact that it is a mere 10 years since Galway and Meath contested an All-Ireland final for the ages, it is still no great surprise that it has come to this. When a period of mediocrity is punctuated with the sort of mini-triumphs that football followers tend to cling to with desperate hope, the big picture gets obscured somewhat and perspective is often lost.
Galway football has had its mini-triumphs these last 10 years. Think of Caltra’s and Salthill/Knocknacarra’s All-Ireland Club triumphs of 2004 and 2006 respectively and of the two national league final appearances those same years.
We can recall All-Ireland U21 titles in 2002 and 2005, a minor win in 2007 and a dazzling championship raindance against Kerry in 2008. But none of these false dawns were ever going to be enough to sustain a proud people that expect and demand success.
A cold analysis of Galway’s league and championship results in 2009 and 2010 would have and should have given their supporters the perspective they need to deal with their problems in 2011.
Crashing out against Donegal in 2009 and last year at home against Wexford was very revealing. Those two performances told us, for once and for all, that there is no swank to playing for Galway anymore.
What has happened in the last two seasons is good club players had merely borrowed against the trust the likes of Liam Sammon and Joe Kernan had placed in them in the county jersey. This borrowing costs nothing at first. You get away with it, you take a little more and a little more until there is no more to draw on and you are found out.
The reality is that, as Kerry discovered a generation ago, the available players simply aren’t of the requisite grade anymore and those who are up to it have to plug other gaps (Finian Hanley) or are out injured (Michael Meehan and Gareth Bradshaw) or are in decline (Páraic Joyce).
Last year and the year before, those of us having our say from the penny pulpits have pointed to the dearth of midfield talent since Kevin Walsh’s departure eight seasons ago as a possible reason for Galway’s woes.
The issue has now become a wider one, with Galway lacking any real presence at centre-back and centre-forward as well as numbers 8 and 9. After they face Cork, a team well endowed in these areas, in Pearse Stadium tomorrow, their league record is likely to read 0 for 5. The question is: would Galway even survive in Division 2 at the moment? More alarmingly, is Galway football in danger of becoming an irrelevancy?
Speak to any Galway football aficionado these days and they’ll tell you that the challenges are starkly simple but the solutions are immeasurably more complex.
GALWAY’S sparring partner of 10 years ago, Meath, are struggling for oxygen at the bottom of the Division 2 shark pool at the moment, having only beaten Sligo and having lost to Laois, Antrim and Donegal.
Whatever difficulties Tomás Ó Flatharta has in managing the often-volatile ambitions of Galway football, his counterpart in Meath, Seamus McEnaney has found patience and realism to be in even shorter supply.
As recently as last Christmas, experienced commentators were tipping Meath as an outside bet for outright success in championship 2011. While acknowledging the poles between league and championship, such hope and expectation seems naive now.
The current crisis in Meath football shows how ill-fitted their model was to cope with the vagaries of league football in mid-March. Picking up league points on the road is essential for any team with designs on promotion. Meath travel to Newbridge tomorrow with just one win and a draw from their last 12 away games.
This time last year, they lost a league game to Tipperary in Semple Stadium. These are the type of games that teams of substance and ambition need to be winning to bolster confidence but this group of players has too many design flaws to be robust enough to withstand a testing spring campaign.
Starting at the back, Brendan Murphy’s kick-out is more suited to fine championship days than into a gale in places like Casement Park, St Conleth’s Park and even Páirc Táilteann. Have Meath got one recognised man-marker in their back six? Their midfield is one-paced and has been for quite some time. Having Seamus Kenny and Shane McAnarney as artisan suppliers was more acceptable when you had a predator like Graham Reilly on the field and when Brian Farrell was in better scoring form than he has been of late.
A decent free-taker can win matches on his own in league football but Cian Ward’s absence was telling against Donegal last week on a day when only three of Meath’s scores came from play, two of them from midfielders and the other from a substitute.
Like many teams at this time of year, Meath have been missing some key players. And the current management cannot be blamed for players dropping balls into goalkeeper’s hands, for kicking 20-yard passes away or for having big lumps of forwards going around in wide arcs instead of taking their man on directly.
They must, however, shoulder some responsibility for not appearing to develop a more sophisticated style of play than getting route one ball to Joe Sheridan and Shane O’Rourke.
After tomorrow, Meath face Derry away and Tyrone at home. In a mad scramble for league points, it’s difficult to see the Royals picking up enough between now and three weeks time to sustain them in Division 2.
Up to now they’ve shown an uncharacteristic reluctance to get their hands dirty.
But they could make an exception for Kildare.
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