I didn’t plan a comeback
‘We didn’t do ourselves justice against Kerry’
HOW far Seán Armstrong was from ever playing again with Galway in the summer of 2015?
Roughly 5,000 miles. That’s the distance from Salthill to San Francisco where he was enjoying life as an ‘ex’ intercounty player. A teaching job allowed him the freedom to see a bit of the world and he set off for the west coast of America.
‘I did a bit of travelling, played plenty of golf over there and really enjoyed it.
‘There were a couple of Galway connections involved with the Ulster club and they said, “Look, come over and we’ll put you up and if you fancy playing a bit of football or taking a few sessions or whatever”. It was very casual, very relaxed.’
The gifted forward, who plundered a hat-trick in the 2005 AllIreland Under 21 final, had fallen out of love with the game by the age of just 28, officially retiring after a decade-long association with the county seniors.
‘No, I didn’t go bananas,’ he laughs on the subject of whether he embraced an expanded social life, even if he allowed himself to get ‘a little pudgy and soft around the edges.’
‘I took a clean break. I was just kind of fed up with the game; too much of anything is obviously bad for you. I just took a year out, I didn’t even play with the club and then I headed off to the States for the summer.
‘I ended up playing a bit of ball over there with Ulster, then I came back and got in with the club, had a good year with the club and then back in with the inter-county. It wasn’t a plan. I’d no intention of going back to play inter-county, I just happened to be enjoying it and playing good football again and Kevin [Walsh] came knocking.’
Scoring six points for SalthillKnocknacarra in last year’s county final was the sort of form that convinced the Galway manager to coax him back. It was as if he was never away. He was one of the bright lights in the promotion push to the National League’s top flight and the Division 2 final against Kildare where he was Galway’s joint top scorer with three points as the county won at Croke Park for the first time since 2001.
He was around long enough to understand the significance.
‘Getting the monkey off the back, getting a win in Croke Park and a bit of silverware — I know it was only the League but it was nice. The last time I won in Croke Park was 2006 with the All-Ireland club final, so over 10 years ago.’
That Michael Meehan — who scored two goals in a lethal partnership in that same U21 final — had returned to be a part of the set-up as well, seemed fitting as Galway dumped Mayo out of Connacht. They then flatlined in the provincial decider against Roscommon, their topsy-turvy season continuing with a hammering of Donegal before going out tamely against Kerry in the All-Ireland quarter-final.
‘It was the first 20 minutes that killed us,’ he says of the Roscommon game. ‘They got up a 10-point lead on us. A Connacht final like that, they were just building and building with confidence, we found it very difficult to get back. We came close. We got a goal but then they got a goal, maybe a small bit against the run of play and that really deflated us.
‘We just took our eye off the ball. We were very flat for the first 20 minutes. We were confident, maybe mistook a small bit of that confidence for complacency. But definitely it is something we’ll learn from.’
It was the low-key manner of the defeat by Kerry that still clearly galls him.
‘I think we feared them a small bit. A few of the older lads were trying to say they’re not to be feared, to drive into them for 70 minutes, not stand off them or give them too much credit. But I think we did that a small bit at the start.
‘Again, in the second half, we were just lacking that bit of belief. But [Ian Burke] Burkey had a great goal chance, [Damien] Comer had, I had a great goal chance — if one or two of them went in it would have changed the game instantly. And then we would have had Kerry come out of third or fourth gear.
‘I had backed Mayo to beat Kerry — obviously it took them two games to do it. I really think we didn’t do ourselves any justice against Kerry. I think we’re way better than that to be quite honest. A lot of the players would also feel the same way, that they didn’t do themselves justice.’
He’s yet to watch Roscommon’s YouTube documentary of their season Behind The Gates, as much because of having to relive the Connacht final. ‘I do plan on sitting down and watching it, but it’s going to be a difficult one to watch, to see them going a little bit nuts in the dressing room after beating us. I think a documentary like that getting in behind the scenes, it’s like following the Lions [rugby tour], it’s nice to get in behind an intercounty set-up. That people, not involved, see what goes on behind closed doors.’ A Year ’Til Sunday was Galway’s own ground-breaking documentary back in 1998 with John O’Mahony in charge. ‘Wouldn’t anyone love to watch behindclosed-doors with Dublin or Mayo? Seriously. Any Mayo fan, Dublin fan, GAA fan, for these boys to be performing at the level they do week in, week out, during the summer.
‘We have this kind of stigma that inter-county teams are afraid to open up the doors. They don’t want your neighbour to see what you’re getting up to so you can get the edge. Which you can understand also. But you can tell the boys to knock off the cameras for a while if you want to keep something behind closed doors. I think it’s a good trend in the GAA.’
He knows Dublin manager Jim Gavin personally, back from when he was an army cadet himself. He gives an interesting insight into what makes the Blues’ most successful manager tick.
‘I would have been in the cadets, the military, around ’05, ’06. I’ve been fortunate — not too many people know this — but I played football with Jim in the army. He was playing fullforward, I was corner-forward. The army used to take on the banks, kind of an inter-firm job.
‘Sure he’s air corps, a pilot — a man of very fine detail. I was fortunate to meet a couple of the Dublin lads a couple of weeks back and they keep singing Jim Gavin’s praises.
‘He’s very passionate, has a drive to win and a very classy footballer. He has eyes in the back of his head. I played him when he was very much my senior. He was just a very intelligent footballer. You could learn a couple of things off him. He might have lost a yard of pace but he’d be finding where the ball would be in three or four plays.
‘Just a class act on the pitch. You could see how he could transfer that to off the pitch, or management.’
Already, Armstrong is setting targets for next year, even if his own future is unclear. He turns 32 next March.
‘Even getting to the last four would be another further step for Galway. We’ve been in the quarters the last two years. To taste 70 minutes away from an All-Ireland final (would be another step to help) develop that mentality within the group.
‘You’d have to take confidence from watching Mayo because we beat them the last two years in a row. If we can beat Mayo, why can’t we get to the last four or get to August or September?’