Adrian Ronan: Henry 'needs to win a trophy'

Henry Shefflin is intent on moving established chess pieces to a different square on the board. He has to. He has to find a formula that leads to silverware crossing the Shannon.

ADDED DIMENSIONS: Eamon O’Shea with Galway manager Henry Shefflin.

Necessity for change. After two seasons without silverware and meaningful progress, Henry Shefflin had the self-awareness to realise such. Even if he hadn’t, someone somewhere would have told him so.

The Galway script didn’t require tearing up and tossing out. But it certainly required tweaking.

Under Shefflin, the Tribesmen still had not been able to find a road past the manager’s native county on Leinster final afternoon. From year one to two, they had drifted further off the July pace. The reliance was still too heavily centred on the 2017 class.

His back-to-school list read as follows: New ideas, new faces, new shape.

Two months after the All-Ireland semi-final systems failure against Limerick, Shefflin turned to one of the game’s most enlightened thinkers.

It was less a case of we’d be delighted if you’d join us, Eamon O’Shea. It was far more a case of we need something different, Eamon, so please join us.

“We know the last couple of years weren’t good enough,” Shefflin said when asked about the addition of O’Shea following their Walsh Cup win over Laois in mid-January.

“We are trying to get better both as management and players. He has a wealth of knowledge, experience. He's a proven winner. So I think the enthusiasm and the freshness, he brings a lot of added dimensions to the set-up.” 

The former Tipp coach and manager is the new face on the sideline attempting to bring new ideas inside it. New faces inside the whitewash have been less plentiful, albeit there has been increased game-time for Donal O’Shea, John Cooney, and Gavin Lee, all of whom are either in season number two or three on the scene.

It’s been more a case of old faces either reappearing or being reassigned.

Darach Fahy started between the sticks for the county’s championship opener against Carlow. It was only his second championship appearance and first since the qualifier defeat to Waterford in July 2021.

David Burke came on with 12 minutes remaining at Pearse Stadium. It was his first championship involvement since the 2022 All-Ireland semi-final defeat.

His namesake Fintan, typically deployed at half-back, was given the full-back role on what was his first championship start since that nightmare Leinster final defeat to Kilkenny.

As for the other Burke in the line-up, Daithí was sent in the opposite direction out to left half-back last Sunday. An unfamiliar staging post for the defender who won four of his five All-Stars in the full-back line. Indeed, it was the first championship fixture since the county’s 2017 All-Ireland quarter-final victory that Burke did not line out in either the No.3 or No. 6 positions.

Occupying the latter watchtower against Carlow was Adrian Tuohey, the first time since the 2022 All-Ireland semi-final that someone other than Burke or McInerney had done so at summertime. Cianan Fahy - half-forward last year - was also tried at centre-back during the spring.

Only one championship game in and it is obvious that Shefflin is intent on moving established chess pieces to a different square on the board. He has to. He has to find a formula that leads to silverware crossing the Shannon. In Year Three, that is the baseline requirement.

“If Henry is being judged on success, then he has to win Leinster,” says Adrian Ronan, former Kilkenny hurler and work colleague of Shefflin.

“Success for Henry is not developing Galway, it is winning trophies. He needs to win a trophy. He hasn’t won a League trophy, so he will most certainly at this stage be all guns blazing for a Leinster at least.” 

The pressure from within maroon borders to deliver silverware falls second to the pressure the manager is putting on himself, adds the two-time All-Ireland winner.

“Being a winner and competitor, he didn’t go there other than to improve Galway and win a trophy. That is the pressure he has put on himself,” Ronan continues.

“Looking in from where we are, the Kilkenny people would expect Henry to be winning a Leinster at least. There is a divide in Kilkenny regards Henry being in Galway. There is the lad on the high stool who says he shouldn’t be there. There is another lad on the high stool saying, so what, why couldn’t he be there, there was nothing available here for him.” 

From four championship meetings, Henry has managed only one win against his home county. Such is the tameness of the Leinster championship at present, this Sunday’s result won’t be defining anyone’s season.

But that doesn’t mean the fixture is without an edge.

“Knowing Henry and Richie O’Neill, two Kilkenny men, that last-minute goal that Cillian Buckley got in the Leinster final will haunt them. And they’ll want to win it for that reason alone, to instil some confidence in the group.”