Dubs a step too far but Galway will stay on rise
GALWAY face their moment of truth tomorrow. They have been missing from football’s top table for 17 years now — they did reach a League final against Kerry in 2006 but that was in front of 5,000 people at the Gaelic Grounds on a day when Leinster and Munster played each other in the Heineken Cup.
But they have been conspicuous by their absence from the top five teams in the country for over a decade and a half. That bracket of teams has changed over the years. Tyrone, Armagh, Cork and Donegal have all joined Kerry, Dublin and Mayo at different times. But Galway have been on the outside, looking in.
It’s a good sign that they are making great efforts to break through again. Gaelic football needs them and I think Galway need it desperately as well. And there is a different feel to this young team that Kevin Walsh has built to the many false dawns they have endured since 2001.
Little did we think, leaving Croke Park back then with Sam Maguire, that it would be 16 years before Galway won at that ground again. But beating Kildare in the Division 2 final last April might have been the start of something special for the county.
In the past few years, Galway would have one or two big wins, often against Mayo, and then flatter to deceive when they get to Croker. The sense is, over this League, that this has changed. They won games in every way possible. Won in wars of attrition, won away from home, came out on top in tight finishes and even won games pulling up.
They also took Dublin on with their own game in Pearse Stadium, albeit there was a suggestion that it was merely shadow boxing. But what people are failing to point out is that the shadow boxing was on both sides.
All the talk was that Dublin came to Salthill with a secondstring side mainly because there was no Stephen Cluxton. However, Ruairi Lavelle, Gareth Bradshaw, Eamonn Brannigan and Damien Comer were all missing from the Galway side. And those are four of Walsh’s most important players.
That’s the setting that presents itself this weekend. The intriguing thing is that Dublin have been the highest scorers in the League, while Galway have the best defensive record. Of course, the All-Ireland champions don’t have a massive game looming on the horizon like the Tribesmen, who meet Mayo in that blockbuster on May 13.
I don’t know whether that will be a distraction or not but Walsh will be very anxious to get a big performance tomorrow, with Mayo in mind. If they are beaten by nine or 10 points after developing a consistent level of performance, it will be like letting air out of the tyre ahead of the summer.
We had that experience with Mayo in 2010. We topped the League table and were going into the final against Cork on a high, but we were well-beaten in Croke Park and the defeat was so close to the Championship, it was almost impossible to build up the morale of the players again.
Down the years, and certainly in my time with Galway, the League was never high on the list of priorities. We only made one final with the side that won two All-Ireland titles — and Mayo beat us in that. But Walsh has used this campaign to his own ends. He has been putting the necessary building blocks in place for overall progress in the Championship.
The success of the hurlers, and all the trappings that went with that over the winter, will have incentivised the Galway footballers to get their own place at the top table. And this seems to be a bunch of players who share their manager’s sharp sense of ambition.
I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of Galway winning this match and I will be quite confident they will ask plenty of questions of the Dubs. There won’t be a runaway victory that we have seen in past League finals.
Jim Gavin is facing a few internal challenges with his squad which he didn’t have before. There are injuries to Bernard Brogan, Cian O’Sullivan and Paul Flynn. Diarmuid Connolly is being rested. And while some of their young guns have done very well, this is a big test for those youngsters tomorrow.
Of course, this is going to be a stern examination of Galway’s consistency, too. Croker is the most difficult pitch to transfer that counter-attacking, defensive style that they have implemented and as Dublin proved against Tyrone last year, they are experts at unpicking that system.
Walsh has based Galway’s gameplan on the searing pace of his team. A couple of years ago, they had the bones of the defensive system set up but they weren’t transitioning fluidly or quickly. That has changed. Eamonn Brannigan and Johnny Heaney have been key to that.
Heaney is as comfortable in a scoring position as a defensive position. The more talented players in recent years have been multi-taskers — I am thinking here of Philly McMahon and Johnny Cooper. And I would put Heaney in that bracket.
And while a lot has been said about Dublin’s assembly line with the likes of Con O’Callaghan and Colm Basquel, Galway have a pretty impressive production line themselves, with Sean Andy Ó Ceallaigh, Sean Kelly, Peter Cooke and Michael Daly all coming through.
It will be close but Stephen Cluxton’s return might just tip the balance to Dublin. The importance of Cluxton over the last five or 10 years is almost taken for granted. He is a confidence-builder and a communicator with his defence. No disrespect to Evan Comerford, who is an excellent young keeper and who will take over eventually, but Cluxton is the master. And he should lead Dublin to another piece of silverware.