Mulholland no apprentice as Galway races to catch up

Thursday morning finds Alan Mulholland pulling up the shutters of one of his family’s 18 bookmaking shops.

Hectic times, these. Just behind the Galway races, next week is the second busiest of the year.

“Cheltenham sandwiched between Meath and Tyrone. It’s a testy week for me, anyway,” he smiles.

John Mulholland Bookmakers are offering evens on both their director’s team and Meath in tomorrow’s game. Alan leaves the odds-making to his brother Eddie, although he’ll be asked for his opinion from time to time.

Last weekend, Galway were fancied by everyone to come away from Westmeath with the spoils. Instead, they left them behind in Mullingar.

“There was a bit of rumour of trouble in their camp which was exaggerated a bit,” says Mulholland. “If anything, it galvanised them and they came out all guns blazing against us.”

Mulholland wasn’t getting too downhearted by how Galway surrendered a lead in the dying stages. With three points from as many games, the goal remains to retain their Division 2 status.

“It’s one thing looking at DVD’s and games from afar but you get to know players by training and working with them. You get to know about their character and their temperament and that’s the most important thing rather than seeing somebody solo the ball up the pitch and over the bar.

“This is what I’m finding out and it’s something that has been missing from Galway football over the last number of years.”

After becoming Galway’s fourth manager since 2009, the general consensus is Mulholland will be given every bit of his three-year term. But even with his handsome track record of leading the county to minor and U21 All-Ireland titles, he appreciates things can change.

“I’m not naïve enough to think that if we lose every game I’m not going to be left untouched in the job. Neither would I want to be.

“From a personal point of view, I wouldn’t enjoy the job if things aren’t moving forward. I think there is a realisation we need some stability there and I’m hoping that people will continue to realise that.

“Everyone has been saying before the campaign ‘ah, we have to give the young lads a chance’ and ‘leave one man in the job for awhile’. However, once you start losing, the same questions start coming up. This isn’t anything we didn’t know was going to happen. With young teams, consistency is going to be a huge issue. We’re losing games we expect to win. Hopefully, we’ll win games we’re expected to lose. It happened against Derry.

“It’s going to take time, there’s going to be bad results and people disappointed with poor performances. If we pulled the trigger again and change it all again I don’t know if it’s going to make any progress for the county.”

That Mulholland wants to achieve success while honouring Galway “values” will endear him to the traditionalists.

He takes confidence from seeing teams “being successful kicking the ball”, although he appreciates Galway can’t yet expect to compete with the best.

“I think it suits us to play more direct football and we will try and do that. There will be deviations throughout the year but the underlying philosophy would be the same — we try to move the ball quickly and play as much in the opponents’ half if we can.

“We can’t be naïve and say we’ll go out gung-ho with the likes of Cork and Kerry. Jimmy McGuinness decides to play it one way — I wouldn’t be totally in favour of playing it that way either.

“We’re going to try and be true to our values without losing the run of ourselves and being naïve. When success comes with this one defence and hand-pass movement throughout the field, people have knee-jerk reactions and think this is the only way.”

The aim for the championship?

“We’re not looking beyond Roscommon and I know that’s a cliché. If we beat Roscommon we’ll hope we can win the next game. It’s not as if we’ll be going into it resigned to losing but we’re not demanding a Connacht title.

“In the past when we’ve been unsuccessful in the first championship game, people have got upset and we’ve fallen in the qualifiers. What I want to make sure of is that if we end up in the qualifiers at any stage [that] we’re still competitive in that situation.

“Galway haven’t beaten a team outside Connacht in I don’t know how many years [eight — v Louth, 2004] in the championship and that’s one thing we’d like to rectify.”

Tomorrow, Mulholland will play some U21s mindful that they have a Connacht opener against Mayo on Wednesday.

“A big problem in the GAA that has become apparent to me is the early years for the elite youngsters.

“The demands are very strong on them so it’s very important we have experienced lads in the panel. We’re not able to use all of our U21’s this weekend because of next Wednesday.”

The strains on him are just as strong as the bookmaker faces into a frenzied week he hopes will be bookended by two wins.