How innovator Franny Forde lifted Galway's plan to the next level
Galway's selector Francis Forde celebrates with Ronan Glennon following the All-Ireland semi-final win over Cork. Pic: ©INPHO/James Crombie
David Burke remains a student of Franny Forde’s. Retirement hasn’t changed that fact.
Galway’s 2017 All-Ireland-winning captain is a woodwork teacher at St Brigid’s, Loughrea. Half a kilometre down the town is St Raphael's, where his old coach is deputy principal.
Connacht Colleges games regularly bring the pair onto the same sideline. That they are in opposing camps doesn’t matter a damn. Mr Burke is still observing, studying, and admiring the pitch work of Mr Forde.
They first worked together 20 years ago. 16-year-old David was in his first of three years as a Galway minor. Franny, having wrapped up his inter-county playing existence a few years earlier, was a selector under minor boss Mattie Murphy.
They stayed working together right up until last June when Burke hurled his 73rd and final championship game in maroon. That 2025 season was not the sign-off he hoped for. Neither was it the second coming Micheál Donoghue, Noel Larkin, and Franny signed up for.
Such were their disappointing results, Galway weren’t on anybody’s radar last summer. But if you looked close enough, there was early trial and error of the approach that has brought a brand-new Tribe within 70 minutes of a first Liam MacCarthy since Burke himself climbed the steps.
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The transformative blueprint is the brainchild of Forde’s. His innovation has built a game-plan around 31-year-old Cathal Mannion at one end of the field and 20-year-old Jason Rabbitte at the other. In the words of Micheál Donoghue last week, this “top coach” is just “getting better and better and better”.
“We could see him trying to implement it on the training ground last year, definitely,” says Burke.
“His big thing was just turn and move forward towards the opposition goal, that it’s not lateral passing and it is not slowing it down. Yes, it looks like it’s running it, but it is still moving it quickly.
“Execution probably let us down a good bit last year, and then this year to come back with a tweak in the plan of more bodies in the middle third, running it that bit more, keeping width in the play, and obviously having Jason up front was a big bonus.”
There’s nobody not impressed by what the Galway coach has cooked up. It mightn’t always aesthetically appeal to the purists, but they can’t argue its effectiveness.
For Burke, more impressive than what Franny has cooked up is how composed and comfortable he has the players in carrying out the game-plan.
After Joshua Ryan flicked the sliotar away from Alan Connolly 47 minutes into the All-Ireland semi-final, Galway strung together four short passes that saw possession move no more than 30 metres up field. The play finished with Gavin Lee pointing.
“With one up top, it is very evident that we are flooding everyone out the field but we’re still getting the likes of Tom Monaghan and Darragh Neary to attack the space that’s up there and then finding them in that space or finding defenders with the license to go forward, so it is still attack-minded, it is not defensive.
“The evolution of it in the 12 months is the incredibly mobile personnel they've got to execute it and to be able to break the tackle,” Burke continued.
After Anthony Cunningham was voted out by players in the bitter 2015 winter up west, Joe Canning didn’t see Micheál Donoghue as the one and obvious successor. What initially excited him about Donoghue was those standing behind him.
“It was never a thing in my head: Now that Anthony’s gone, there’s only one fella for this job! I didn’t actually have any real sense of clarity about what should happen next. But a big positive was the presence of Franny Forde on his backroom ticket as a coach. Franny had an excellent reputation from his work with Galway minors,” Canning wrote in his autobiography.
Burke, recalling that period, again reaches for the innovator description.
“It was simple drills he had us doing, but they were all match-specific, and then just repeating them over and over and over again. There was nothing monotonous about them. He was very innovative in that way.
“It was obvious then and it’s still obvious that he is someone who thinks about the game quite a bit. He’s coaching all the time. And then on top of that, he’s a Galway fan. He played with Galway himself, mightn’t have been successful, but had the chance to come back and coach a team to be successful, and that was his biggest driving factor.”
The same 2016 season as he came in with the Galway seniors, the Turloughmore native was managing St Rynagh’s. His connection to the Banagher club stemmed from his many years teaching in the town. Having oversaw All-Ireland vocational schools glory in 2010, they now wanted similar oracle-working to end a 23-year county title famine.
Sean Dolan was a half-forward ball-winner for both teams. He was captain when Franny masterminded the end of the Rynagh’s wait.
“Franny’s big thing was self-confidence and expressing that. I was probably unaware of it when I was younger, but when you reflect, it was a case of not so much this is how he wants me to play, but more this is how he wants me to feel when I am playing,” said Dolan this week.
“He was very strong at lifting someone up, a text message here or there to keep you going well and understanding the demands of performance that some lads might need a little bit extra. He was so good at instilling a real sense of belief in your own ability. He always wanted you to be the best you could be for you.”
Looking west across the Shannon, there is no surprise that in a set-up where Franny has the whistle, you have a raft of young guns revolutionising a county.
“Expression for a young player is another really strong attribute of Franny’s. We had players in their early 20s, and Franny was exceptionally strong in convincing them that their time is now. Don’t be waiting until you’re 24 or 25. He was able to give them the confidence to express themselves,” Dolan continued.
“He had an awareness of how we should play to our strengths, of course. That’s the job of the coach and he was exceptional at that, but in terms of if the talent is already there, how do you get it out of the players, and that’s where I thought he was really good.”
After success with Rynagh’s and Galway, Forde brought Raphaels to a first All-Ireland schools final in 20 years, brought Turlough to a first Galway SHC final in 30 years, did two years with Laois and two more with Dublin.
The education and the enterprise never stopped. Galway are once again the beneficiaries.
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