GALWAY ARE NOT TRUE CHAMPIONS
Tribe’s shambolic performance against Limerick proves they have the wrong mentality
They were a team who went through the motions
IAM not being pedantic here but I believe we throw the word ‘champions’ around a little too lightly for my liking.
These days it does not take much to be called a champion.
Whoever wins Munster or Leinster this summer will be declared provincial champions, even though we know that the cups that they will have won have become utterly devalued over time.
The same will go to whoever wins the Allianz League in a couple of weeks’ time, they too will be hailed as League champions but in a competition where you don’t know who is going hard and who is pulling up hard, it seems a rather empty citation.
Perhaps it’s an age thing because I can still remember a time when it seemed like the whole world was tuned into the same radio when Muhammad Ali was taking on all around him in simpler times when belts were scarce.
Back then, boxers had one belt — the one holding up their trousers — and the promise of another if they won their world title fight.
Now, you can’t have a scrap outside the chipper on a Saturday night without someone declaring you to be new IABBAWCDF Chicken Wing champion of the world.
But you don’t have to travel as far as boxing’s commercialised underbelly to realise that the notion of being a champion has been debased.
All you had to go last Sunday was travel as far as Salthill, where in little over 35 minutes Galway produced the kind of performance against Limerick that fell somewhere in between shambolic and scandalous.
I write that in no way to detract from Limerick’s achievement — promotion has lifted a cloud that has hung heavy over the game in the county for the past eight years — but that should not blind us to the manner of how Galway imploded in the second half.
They were a team who went through the motions, while Limerick, who were awful in the first half, sensed their complacency and took full advantage of it with a full-blooded display that stirred the heart.
In contrast, Galway’s apathy shook us to the core.
They may well have codded themselves into thinking as champions that they have bigger fish to fry this year than a young Limerick team on the make.
Thing is, though, they are not ‘champions’, not in the real sense and just because people call them that it does not necessarily make it true.
The last true champions we had in our game were Kilkenny.
Imagine if Brian’s Cody great team were leading a young Limerick side at half-time by eight points, would there have been a greater chance of them winning by 16 points than losing the game by two?
Gaelic football is currently wit- nessing the full wrath of great champions in Dublin. At the same stage last Sunday that Galway were retiring to their dressing room with that eight-point lead, Jim Gavin’s team were leading a young Kerry team on the make in Croke Park.
By the time they were finished, Éamonn Fitzmaurice’s fledglings were left in little doubt as to where they stood in football’s new order as Dublin all but reached their sixth League final in a row.
The hallmark of true champions is that they never need a belt or a silver cup to be reminded of their status.
It is a state of mind, one which is relentless and ruthless when it comes to reminding the rest that they are very much second best.
They know the responsibility that comes with being a champion and they know that it extends far beyond making a speech on the steps of the Hogan Stand.
Galway, sadly, do not qualify as a member of that elite group.
What is particularly unforgivable is that they witnessed firsthand when blowing away a Tipperary team who also wore the champions’ mantle in last year’s League final the folly of those teams who think that form comes with a switch.
Of course, and this is what fascinates about the League, is that they get an immediate chance to show if they have learned that lesson when they take on Wexford in tomorrow’s quarter-final.
I don’t fancy them, though, and this is why.
Sometimes, you can be a champion without having any of the silverware trappings to prove it.
Davy Fitzgerald is of a champion mind-set, an individual blessed with the attitude that he would still go through you in a married versus singles St Stephen’s Day puck-around.
And it is showing too. They lost last weekend to Kilkenny but they lost the right way.
Even though they had the points long in the bag to qualify for the quarter-finals that did not stop them chasing Kilkenny all the way to the line.
Galway will find tomorrow that you can’t just decide when to turn back into All-Ireland champions’ mode.
It does not work like that and it never has.
That is why it might just be better if from here on, to prevent those lacking in self-awareness, if we stopped referring to those who win the biggest game of the year as ‘champions.’
Perhaps, if they were simply referred to as the Liam MacCarthy Cup winners it might shine a little light on their thought process.
There are winners and losers in every game, but champions answer to a far higher calling.
They measure their worth by how they carry themselves every time they go out and play.
And they don’t pay any heed to being hailed as ‘champions’ because they are too busy reminding people why they are in the first place.
Galway are no champions; they are just a team who won a big game. The sooner they realise that the better they will be for it.