STARS TURN IT ON
Prolific Cooney lights up Singapore
AFTER winning a first All-Ireland senior hurling title since 1988, it’s as if the Galway hurlers are on a world tour to celebrate.
Following on from the recent exhibition game at the iconic Fenway Park in Boston, the PwC All-Stars tour to Singapore provided another exotic location for the likes of Conor Cooney to showcase his talent before the champions jet out to New York and Cancun over the Christmas period.
The Padang venue in the heart of the city provided an arresting backdrop to a nine-a-side game where only goals counted, the modifications down to the smaller pitch dimensions.
Due to the humidity and temperature of almost 30 degrees, the game was played in four quarters with rolling substitutions. Cooney’s seven goals helped the 2017 selection to victory and afterwards, he tried to capture what the All-Ireland breakthrough meant as Galway finally built a bridge to the two-in-a-row team of 1987-88.
‘We grew up on stories of what those teams achieved. I suppose they were idols to us and yeah, it’s something you want to emulate, to do a back-to-back. They did it in ’88 so absolutely, it’s something you’d set out to try and achieve. It’s not easy, they’re such fine margins.
‘I suppose lads talk about that but I suppose if you put yourself under that amount of pressure you’re maybe setting yourself up for a small bit of failure. We’ll enjoy this, it’s the first one we’ve won for a long time.’
He admits that bridging that gap is such a weight off the players’ shoulders.
‘When we did win it was a great relief. There was an overwhelming feeling of relief. We’d been under a lot of pressure for a long time because the Galway public is mad into hurling and I suppose they expect so much every year and we finally achieved the goal we set out to achieve.’
After the near misses of 2012 and 2015, he admits, ‘We probably wouldn’t have been let back across the Shannon if we lost! There was a lot of pressure there…
‘I suppose it puts some demons to rest.
‘It’s very tough. You sacrifice your whole life to hurling and there are such fine margins trying to win knockout hurling and you get to a final and you’re narrowly beaten a couple of times and it’s very difficult like, it’s heartbreaking.’
For Cooney, it completes a club and county All-Ireland double after he played a key role in St Thomas’s victory back in 2013. ‘They’re hard enough to compare really. They’re two different things. The club All-Ireland, you’re hurling with your brothers, you’re hurling with your friends you’ve hurled with since you’re a young lad.
‘The inter-county is crazy, you’re hurling with lads again that you’ve hurled with for years. They’re kind of two different things. If you asked me which was better or which was more emotional, I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t split them. They were both incredible, two fantastic achievements.’