Kevin Walsh: It suits Mayo, Kerry, and Dublin for Galway to play 'traditional' football

The former Galway manager sees evidence of a more pragmatic gameplan under current manager Pádraic Joyce

Former Galway manager Kevin Walsh. Picture: INPHO/Laszlo Geczo

It’s an easy and unhelpful narrative to say Galway must stick to the principles of a traditional gameplan, believes their former player and manager Kevin Walsh.

Walsh won two Connacht titles as Galway boss but eventually attracted criticism for deviating from a traditional approach by funnelling more players behind the ball. 

But in Galway’s four-point league defeat by Dublin on Sunday, he saw evidence of a more pragmatic gameplan under current manager Pádraic Joyce — though Walsh believes more defensive work is needed to avoid the kind of heavy defeat Galway suffered against Kerry two weeks ago.

“People say the traditional style suits Galway, but it probably suits Mayo and Kerry and Dublin that that’s what Galway play,” Walsh said, speaking on the Irish Examiner Allianz League Podcast.

“If you break it down — a neighbour of mine Peter Lee was on the last Galway national league winning team 40 years ago, 1981.

“Take out the two All-Irelands in our time, when we were blessed with a gang of young fellas, and probably blessed with a few older fellas to help them along, and blessed with John O’Mahony who came in as a very good organiser — take out that three-year spell and Galway have won no All-Ireland since ‘66.

“So a traditional style, or whatever you want to call it, football has moved on.

“If you turn back the clock to two weeks ago in Tralee and you look at yesterday, it was a big big improvement. They tightened up on the defence obviously and played far more bodies behind the ball.

“It’s really important that the defensive structure is right. I think all the best teams, regardless of what’s being said and shouted about, know how to defend and the areas to defend.” 

That includes Dublin, Walsh notes.

“Because they have an expansive game, because they have great athletes, because their transition is good, a lot of people choose to ignore how good their defensive game is. Good is getting bodies in the right places, which is automatically behind the ball anyway.

“If you go deep into it and analyse it properly, you’ll find they do put bodies behind the ball in the right places. They swallow up all the space that the opponents like to have and they do it well and it’s one of the reasons they win so much.

“It’s not just about getting bodies behind the ball, it’s understanding what to do. It’s about the footwork, it’s about what space you take up, it’s where the sweeper stands.” 

Despite evidence of more solidity, Galway's defensive setup needs tweaks, Walsh believes. 

“You'll keep the score down by getting bodies back but if you're going to win you need to understand your ‘help defence’.

“For Dublin’s [second] goal, the help defence was missing. It was a case of looking at the guy with the ball and not seeing the biggest threat of all, which is the runner.

“I think it’s really important that coaching comes into it, that you understand pressure on the ball but where is the biggest threat coming from. It cannot be someone coming off a shoulder and a pop pass breaks the whole line.

"I think Dublin got three fisted points — if needs be they were probably goal chances as well, you’d like to be cutting out those.”