Galwey ponders playing future

MICK GALWEY will “take stock” before deciding whether or not to call time on his rugby playing days.

Galwey will be 37 next October and his intention for some time was to play out the season just ending and then hang up his boots. However, he is keen to remain within the Munster set-up, whether as a backroom adviser a role he carried out to outstanding effect during this year's campaign or perhaps even as a player.

Mick O'Driscoll's much regretted departure to Perpignan means that Munster will be short of second-row cover, especially during the Celtic League campaign when Paul O'Connell and Donnacha O'Callaghan will almost certainly be away on World Cup duty. Alternatives are not exactly thick on the ground and it could be that coach Alan Gaffney will be glad to have Galwey in reserve.

"I'll just wait and see how things develop," said Mick after Monday's victory over Midleton. "I'll take stock over the next few weeks. As regards going for the record equalling 11th medal, who knows. Ten isn't bad. The Munster Cup still means an awful lot to me. When I won my first medal in 1986, fellas like Colm Tucker and Gerry McLoughlin were at their prime and playing for Munster and Ireland but I saw how much the Munster Cup meant to them. That's the way I feel about it now. The hype then was something like that surrounding the Heineken Cup today and I'd love to see those days back again."

It is a great shame that a competition that once meant so much has fallen on lean times. This season, some clubs withdrew altogether, others fielded weakened teams to ensure early elimination and several rounds were completed without the knowledge of close on 100% of the most committed rugby supporters in the province. Fewer than 1, 500 saw Monday's final.

Midleton played outstandingly well and looked fully capable of pulling off a shock result until conceding a seven pointer completely against the run of play midway through the second half. Full marks, though, to Shannon. They are to be congratulated on completing only the second four-in-a-row since the event was first contested in 1884.

The final proved that the Munster Cup still counts for a lot and it surely behoves the Branch to do their share chiefly in encouraging some clubs to take it a lot more seriously and in the area of publicity to see that it can be restored to something like the eminence it once enjoyed.

And who better to front such a campaign than a certain Mick Galwey.

lIn yesterday's paper it was incorrectly stated that Michael Galwey had equalled the record of 10 Munster Senior Cup medals playing on the Shannon side which beat Midleton at Musgrave Park on Monday. In fact, the record of 11 cup medals still stands and belongs to Jack O'Connor.