Canning defends Galway mettle

Joe Canning has said the former Galway players who slammed the current team were wrong to question their mental fortitude, the Irish Examiner reports.

The two-time All Star yesterday admitted to reading the Saturday newspaper article in which ex-selector Brendan Lynskey and former managers Conor Hayes and Noel Lane heavily criticised John McIntyre’s side.

Some of their arguments appeared to be justified given the poor performance by Galway in going down to Dublin. But Canning defended his team and insisted they are not as bad as the six-point defeat suggested.

"I don’t know. I didn’t go back and read it again," he said at an adidas boot launch yesterday. "I don’t think there is (truth in what they said). We’re not going out to play badly, we’re going out to win for Galway and we’re trying our best.

"I don’t think there is a lack of mental toughness or anything like that. We were well prepared for the game and we had chances during the game.

"Personally, I had eight wides and if I had half of them, we would have been a lot closer to Dublin. We only lost by five or six points.

"Looking back on it now, a bit of luck and if we had of taken half our chances we could have nearly won the game.

"The guys are wondering what happened but that’s life. It was just one of those days when nothing went right for us."

Two-time All-Ireland winner Lynskey, a selector under Ger Loughnane, remarked the current crop of players are "a little bit on the shy side. Afraid to put up their hands or a little bit cowardly".

Canning said Lynskey is entitled to his opinion.

"I don’t know, he said what he thought and you have to respect that. He’s been an All-Ireland winner with Galway and none of us are.

"You just have to take it on the chin."

Getting back to Portumna from Tullamore that night, Canning retired to bed long before his parents called it a day.

The next day he was up early with a bag of balls and headed down to the local pitch. To iron out the wrinkles in his free-taking.

"I was supposed to answer questions in my own head the following morning so I just went to the pitch but it nearly was worse when they were all going over," he revealed about the Sunday morning’s frees.

"I thought there might be something else wrong but it was just one of those evenings that nothing goes right and you have to move on."