Canning must be let wander

HOW many goals will Joe Canning score tomorrow?

It’s a simplistic question, clearly. It may well turn out to be an irrelevant question, given that Galway could win without Canning sending the green flag flying. But it’s a question that has to be asked nonetheless. On two counts.

First off it’s relevant in tomorrow’s context. On the one hand we have a man who’s scored 13 goals in his 17 championship appearances, on the other a team who conceded seven goals last time out. Make it 14 or 15 in 18 appearances and, unless Galway do something stupid in defence, that’ll be that for Waterford.

On which point, on the evidence of the Munster final, Galway will have to do something very stupid in defence for Waterford to score goals. Much has been written about the Deise’s defending against Tipperary; not half enough has been written about their failings at midfield and in the half-forward line, the real source of their problems. Rooting out possession, holding onto it, employing it as a platform on which to build: Waterford weren’t at the races in that regard.

Here was the source of Tipp’s goals. Shane McGrath caught the first puckout over the head of Richie Foley and it went downhill from there. With identifiable flying objects arrowing in on top of them from all angles, Brick Walsh et al soon knew what it must have felt like to be a Londoner in the closing stages of World War Two.

(Come to think of it, that’s another reason why Galway should make the semi-final stage for the first time in, staggeringly, six years: their well ventilated frailties when it comes to winning ball in the middle third will not be examined or exposed. Not by Waterford. Not on their form, or anything remotely related to it, of a fortnight ago.)

Yet how many, if any, goals Canning scores tomorrow is relevant in big-picture terms as well as in the micro. Either it’ll be another Tipperary/Kilkenny showdown in September or it won’t be. If it’s the latter, Galway are the only team who’ll bring about such a scenario.

And if they do, only one man will bring about that scenario.

Joe Canning.

We continue to expect the earth from Canning – see the previous two sentences — and when we don’t get it we feel cheated. Last month he was compared unfavourably to Henry Shefflin, his obvious exemplar, after Galway’s defeat by Dublin. That was fair enough; Canning’s striking that Saturday night in Tullamore had been off, his decision-making poor. But too often we forget that Shefflin plays for Kilkenny and Canning, whose portfolio of work by the age of 21 was substantially more impressive, plays for Galway.

Remember Shefflin’s first couple of years in the striped jersey? He didn’t have to pass the bullets by himself because he had John Power passing them. He didn’t have to fire them by himself because he had DJ alongside him as assassin in residence. And when he grew older and Power and DJ were gone, well, then he had Martin Comerford to pass him the bullets and Eddie Brennan to fire them if need be. Canning has none of those luxuries.

Shefflin will act as first violin as and when the need arises, but in recent years he’s largely been content to wield the baton. Canning has to play every instrument in the orchestra. If occasionally it seems like he’s trying to do everything himself it’s almost certainly because he feels he has to. Time will sand those edges. Time and, perhaps, the emergence of a better Galway team than the one he started out in.

The debate over where he’s best deployed has been given fresh legs since the Cork game. The majority opinion, as espoused by Sean Treacy, the former Portumna and Galway selector, wants him in the position of maximum opportunity on the edge of the square. Simple, obvious, incontrovertible.

But the argument advanced by Johnny Kelly, another Portumna stalwart, has much to recommend it. Placing Canning in the half-forward line allows him to move around and in the process places a greater responsibility on the men beside him. No more “Hey, let’s get the ball into Joe and leave the rest to him!”

If any message emerged from the Gaelic Grounds a fortnight ago it was that the Galway management are leaning towards the Johnny Kelly school of thought. What they want is for Canning to be in the right position to receive when the ball is moved quickly out of defence. What they don’t want is for him to be static on the edge of the square being dogged by a wily full-back with all the dark arts of the number three’s trade at his disposal.

So let Canning wander and make of each ball as he sees fit. A pass here, a shot from distance there, a run somewhere else, a backwards handpass when he’s in the mood. Above all, relieve him of the burden of having to turn every chance into a score. Should the upshot of this be that he becomes a Shefflin tribute band, albeit one who does – because he’ll be required to – a bit more scoring from play, so be it.

Some of the positions he took up against Cork were planned; others just off the cuff. Canning’s season truly began at the Gaelic Grounds a fortnight ago. He ought to be able to ramp it up a gear tomorrow.

Two reasons why Dublin should beat Limerick tomorrow, poor Conal Keaney’s misfortune notwithstanding. They’re the Division One champions, which has to count for something against the Division Two champions.

And two years ago, against the same county at the same venue at the same championship stage, their grasp of the basics broke down under pressure in the closing quarter. The Dubs, being older, wiser and better now, tomorrow will not witness a recurrence. One reason why they may not beat them. Donal O’Grady is coaching Limerick.