John Keenan: ‘We felt we could take them all on’

Fate rarely draws a map. John Keenan knows that if Galway hadn’t spent three weeks in New York for the 1967 league final, they’d have won a fourth consecutive All-Ireland that September.

However, he’s also well aware that had the Galway footballers not landed Stateside in May of ’67, he would never have crossed paths with Gabriel Walsh, later to become Mrs Gabriel Keenan.

For five consecutive years during the mid-sixties, the national league was structured in such a fashion that the winners of the ‘home final’ travelled to New York to play the locals in the final proper. Galway, having overcome Dublin in the home final at the end of April, boarded a plane to take them across the Atlantic. The decider against New York was broken into two legs, stretching out their time in the Big Apple. Given the team had covered a fair amount of road during the three previous all-conquering summers, there was “a bit of steam let go”.