Conor Neville: Galway get off surfboards to make it a contest
During last year’s quarter-final defeat against Kerry, he compared their zeal for victory to the zeal with which Rose of Tralee contestants prosecute their stated objective of ‘world peace’.
Though it is more usually Miss World contestants who roll out world peace as a key policy objective. Rose of Tralee candidates tend to be less ambitious in that respect (wouldn’t it be delightful if a Miss World contestant forsook the usual plea for world peace and instead urged that the local authority in their area get to work on that swimming pool?).
Brolly’s point was: The Rose of Tralee or Miss World may say she is in favour of world peace but in reality very few Miss World contestants have been willing to take the practical steps to affect the change necessary.
Yesterday, he painted a vivid picture of the Galway footballers in the first half of this decade, one that fed the stereotype that the county is full of buskers with long hair who spend their evenings strumming guitar strings at house parties.
Galway, Brolly said, were a collection of ‘surfer dudes, modern trad lovers, not taking their football that terribly seriously… Everything Galway did yesterday seemed like a conscious repudiation of that image. They scrapped and battled for everything in a manner that scandalised the Mayo players. And they fouled with enormous liberality.
They played the entire 70 minutes like a team defending a narrow lead in the last few minutes of an All-Ireland final.
Against Leitrim, Galway committed a barely believable 42 fouls. They played 12 men behind the ball for most of the game and treated the match less like a championship game in its own right than a simulation for playing Mayo.
Yesterday’s game had a bite and cynicism not often evident in the Connacht championship in recent times.
There was four minutes of injury time and 70 per cent of that was taken up with Lee Keegan lying on the ground. Stupidly, the referee declined to add the time wasted.
Galway hemorrhaged scores in a damaging third quarter and never quite recovered. It was hard to figure out what the lads back in Donnybrook thought of it all.
At half-time, they were upbeat about Galway, by full-time they adopted a much sniffier attitude.
But unlike the 2013 disaster, Galway’s loss this year at least offered encouragement for the future. For the first time since 2009, the Galway-Mayo match was a genuine contest.
Editor of Reeling in the Years is one of the most important cultural jobs in Irish life. Infinitely more important than a Saoi of Aosdana.
One hopes when the next batch of episodes come to be made (in 2020 probably, you know they can’t wait to make more), the 2014 episode will devote time to one of the most important cultural phenomena of that year — the British Twitter Reaction.
For those few souls who are still unaware of the craze, the British Twitter Reaction is essentially a genre of article which involves compiling a dozen or so tweets from Twitter users in the United Kingdom which chronicle the tweeter’s bemusement and/or wonderment while watching GAA (hurling principally) on Sky Sports.
All those firemen in Essex who were bemused at the need for a goalkeeper when the players kept driving it over the bar, the teachers in Dunstable who watched hurling and proclaimed that the Irish were all mad.
After an initial burst of curiosity, the reading public came to loathe these articles — though not so much that they didn’t want to click on them.
British Twitter Reactions (BTRs) generated massive opprobrium in comments sections but the traffic on these articles was such that media organisations were prepared to hold their noses and cop the flak.
Naturally, the area is such fertile ground for post-colonial theorists of all stripes — both those who practice their discipline in academia and those who practice their discipline predominantly in pubs.
The whole thing started again this week.
The comedian and star of BBC’s The Thick of It, Chris Addison, was the latest in the long and distinguished line of non-Irish people to acknowledge hurling’s existence this week.
Many of us have been on tenterhooks awaiting Addison’s verdict on hurling and on Thursday he delivered.
@mrchrisaddison: Saw some Hurling on TV last night so I’d just like to say congratulations, Ireland, on any of you being left alive.
Strap in for more of this for the rest of the summer.
Accepting the job of co-commentator means you are hiring your own band of personal social media critics. Their job will be to lampoon your every utterance, pick up on every verbal infelicity and castigate every incorrect prediction.
In a week when Andy Townsend was let go by ITV, largely it appears on the back of what we will euphemistically term ‘Twitter feedback’, it is a good time to reflect on the social media hordes take on Tommy Carr’s performance.
In the sub-heading, I have described Carr as ‘divisive’.
‘Divisive’ is a euphemism for someone who in fact unites opinion. Just not in the manner one would wish to unite opinion.
Most people who are termed ‘divisive’ would actually have to greatly improve their public image to wear the term in its literal sense.
Aside from one compliment around his incisiveness, he received generally negative reviews, with one person declaring him ‘the Michael Owen of GAA commentary’.
I must confess I didn’t find him majorly offensive.
Although he did describe Lee Keegan’s injury-time decision to lie on the ball and not let go as ‘sportsmanship’, a curious deployment of the word. All told, Carr got a rough ride.
No shame in that. Such is the co-commentator’s lot.
Following a second successive relegation back in April, Westmeath manager Tom Cribbin addressed his own players through the medium of an interview with Radio Midlands 103.
“They [younger players] gave everything but there are a few big lads who should be standing up and leading, fuckin’ lay down and that’s the trouble with this team. It’s lads who should be leading, chest out and showing these young lads where to go, they’re the ones that’s killin’ this team.”
Ex-managers reared in the Alex Ferguson tradition of not criticising players publicly balked at Cribbin’s outburst.
The consensus was it marked the beginning of the end and would perhaps precipitate a swift Babs Keating-like dismissal.
Naturally, the opposite has happened. Undeterred, and perhaps even aided, by their manager’s excoriation, Westmeath have rallied, beating Louth and now disposing of tricky customers Wexford.
A Leinster semi-final (aka, the pinnacle for any smallish county in the Midlands) awaits… Cribbin gives succour to teacup throwers everywhere.
Galway no good End off.
Deliberate and clumsy tackles seem to be perceived as all the one under the black book now... #GAA
Joe Brolly on about McGeeney’s tactical rigidity. Kildare didnt play with 12 behind ball under him + were slammed for naivety v Dubs 2013
Two minutes left and Galway 4 points down Tom Carr says ‘I think Galway are going to need a goal to win this one’ :-)
First guest on the marty squad? Enda Kenny. It’s like the empire strikes back, none of that second captains stuff now!!!
Mayo there for the taking, Galway a bit naive but at least Galway are going places! #GalwayVMayo
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
