Hayes savages Tribe as being ‘years from title’

Former boss Conor Hayes has launched a stinging attack on the current Galway senior hurling team, insisting that the Tribesmen are not good enough to challenge for a senior All-Ireland title.

Hayes, the last Galway man to lift the Liam MacCarthy Cup, in 1988, fears relegation from Division 1A of the league will have dire consequences.

Former full-back Hayes is unhappy with the current make-up of the Galway team and believes some players are being deployed out of position.

And he believes recent underage success, including a minor and U21 All-Ireland double last year, has led to false expectations for the senior team.

Hayes has spoken out just days

before Galway’s relegation clash with Dublin and warned that Anthony Cunningham’s men are lagging light years behind All-Ireland champions Kilkenny, who beat the Westerners by 25 points 11 days ago.

Hayes said: “The Galway trend in this league campaign is worrying. We started off quite well and were unlucky against Tipp. In the Waterford game we came unstuck. That was very disappointing because the lads should have known what Waterford were going to do to them. They dropped a man behind the half-back line and Galway didn’t address that. And we knew what to expect from Kilkenny. Again, this happened last year when we suffered a drubbing against Tipperary at Pearse Stadium. You’re talking about a Galway team that won a league title two years ago.

“A lot of things are not adding up but there is a lack of stability in the team. Too many young lads have come in at the one time and players not playing in key positions is one of the issues that management has to look at. I’d have Shane Kavanagh at full-back for stability and drop Fergal Moore back to the corner, with David Collins out to the wing. Lads should be played in their best positions and Collins is struggling at full.

“I’ve dealt with him for a few years and he’s an outstanding wing-back. And you’ll get the best out of Fergal Moore at corner-back. Centre-back is not his natural position and he’s struggling a bit with that as well.”

Hayes said he was “amazed” when Cunningham decided to take off attackers Iarla Tannian and Damien Hayes before half-time in the Nowlan Park massacre. With 29 minutes gone, Cunningham had withdrawn his entire full-forward line against Kilkenny, as James Regan was also called ashore.

And Hayes insisted: “You destabilise the team by doing that. Taking off all of the full-forward line causes instability and they looked a bit lost in the second half for ideas. The worrying thing going into the championship is that you could almost pick the Kilkenny, Cork and Tipp championship teams, maybe Waterford too. But you’d have to think about the Galway team, when you should have 10 or 12 positions nailed down by now. Look at Jimmy Barry-Murphy in Cork. A goalkeeper, six backs and two midfielders almost settled upon, with Pa Cronin centre-forward, [Conor] Lehane on the wing, Paudie O’Sullivan full-forward, Pat Horgan in the corner. And that’s with me after seeing Cork maybe once or twice. I’ve seen Galway in every league game this year but if you asked me who’s going to be full-back or centre-back for the championship, I couldn’t be certain.”

Many felt that Galway’s switch to the Leinster championship would allow successive teams to develop and test themselves in a more competitive environment — rather than coming in cold to the championship every year.

But Hayes remarked: “The one thing I thought would have happened in Leinster was that the extra championship games would have improved them.

“But it doesn’t seem to have and they’re not learning year on year. They played well in a couple of qualifiers and fell back again [losing to Waterford in the All-Ireland quarter-final]. Is it a more basic thing? Are standards as high as we think they are in Galway?

“We’re producing good minors but if you look at the U21 team that won the All-Ireland last year, you’ll get Niall Burke, Barry Daly and Niall O’Donoghue and that’s about all, unless a few others take longer to develop.

“Twenty-four years without a senior All-Ireland is far too long. And it’s 2005 since we were in a semi-final and standards are dropping all the time. This game on Sunday is crucial. If we lose, we’re behind Dublin and the other teams in Division 1A next year. Galway are still two or three years off even challenging for an All-Ireland and the gulf between Galway and Kilkenny is not going to close that much in a couple of months.”