Joe’s race to get BACK ON HIS FEET
Injury to Canning threatens Galway’s year but if they can hang in until his return, they will be big challengers
NO PLAYER HAS THRIVED AS MUCH UNDER DONOGHUE AS CANNING
ASERIES of questions help whittle the 2019 hurling Championship down to its essence. Can Limerick maintain the form and physical standard that has inspired them for almost 12 months? Will Liam Sheedy find a way of inspiring Tipperary all over again?
Will Clare, Cork or Kilkenny find the class and consistency to seriously contest?
And a new question emerged with some urgency this week: can Galway win an All-Ireland without Joe Canning?
He was, according to Galway hurling board chairman Michael Larkin, due to have surgery this week on the groin injury he suffered against Waterford on March 24 in an Allianz League semi-final, and which his county suggest will keep him out for up to four months.
‘I know he’s scheduled to have an operation this week so we do wish him the very best in that, and a speedy recovery,’ Larkin told a podcast on Galway Bay FM.
‘He is an exceptional player and always will be an exceptional player.’
His greatness is certainly assured, sealed forever with the 2017 final win. But at 30 years of age, and despite this being his 12th season of senior inter-county hurling, Canning is not due to become a topic for reminiscence yet.
The past two years have seen him maintain high levels of performance and influence; he has been in the form of his life.
He was hurler of the year in 2017 but had as strong a claim on that honour last year, too. From the Leinster final replay against Kilkenny onwards – a match in which he scored 0-10, four from play – through the semi-final and replay against Clare, and a performance in the final defeat to Limerick in which he was one of the few Galway players to play near his best, Canning was inspirational.
That influence barely weakened in the less rarefied environs of the League.
He played in six of Galway’s seven games, including the semi-final, and was only absent for the Offaly game when he was one of the players rested by Micheál Donoghue.
Canning accounted for 0-52 of Galway’s 8-140 across those matches, with 0-7 of his tally coming from play.
In sides that were consistently experimental, he was a source of leadership, and the contentious blow he took against Waterford that resulted in his groin injury came after a careering run through the opposition defence as Galway tried to close a three-point deficit.
The manner of the tackles on Canning before he was floored by a shoulder from Kevin Moran angered Donoghue after the match, and in a statement subsequently released by the Galway board, they estimated he would miss between 14 and 16 weeks with the injury.
If he had surgery this week, that suggests the Leinster final on June 30, were Galway to make it, would be much too soon for Canning.
Depending on Galway’s success in
the Leinster round-robin, they could be in an All-Ireland quarter-final on either the first or second weekends in July, dates which look more plausible targets if Canning recovers without complications.
That such a specific period of recuperation was released by a county was in itself significant. This is an age when teams are less and less forthcoming with information on player fitness, but the Galway board said they were issuing a statement in response to media reports, which were ‘entirely incorrect and were at no point checked with the Galway team management or medical team’.
Their clarification caused major surprise, given initial optimism that the injury against Waterford, which saw him stretchered off, had been a dead leg.
The reality was a significant injury to the county’s most important player, and perhaps their greatest ever.
The loss could have a ruinous effect on Donoghue’s Championship planning. With him, Galway could be confident of retaining the Leinster Championship and challenging Limerick and whoever else comes out of Munster for the All-Ireland.
Without him, even the provincial challenge becomes complicated. Galway certainly have enough residual quality to reach a Leinster final without Canning, but confidence is necessarily shaken by the loss of such an important figure.
There was a clear design to Donoghue’s plans in the spring. He was intent on experimentation in the League, using over 30 players and actually splitting his squad for the opening match against Laois, half doing duty in the match and the other half playing Ballygunner in a challenge match. Canning was one of the few consistent selections, and he responded with some authoritative performances. His team-mates and the Galway management will take some solace in his proven capacity to recover from serious injury. In the 2016 semi-final loss to Tipperary, he suffered a hamstring tear so serious that, he later suggested, it could have ended his career. By the end of the following season, he was an All-Ireland winner and the hurler of the year. Twelve months later, he almost inspired a fightback against Limerick in time added on at the end of the final, and won his fifth All-Star award. As a player, he flourished young and brilliantly, but as Galway flat-lined through much of this decade, their designs on winning the Liam McCarthy Cup for the first time since 1988 were as remote as at any point in those three decades.
Donoghue transformed them and no player has thrived under him as much as Canning. His last two seasons have been the most influential of his career so far.
In an interview during last summer’s Championship, he was asked what he wanted to achieve in the remaining years of his career.
‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘I remember only last year (2017), I got a knee injury from the Leinster final and I didn’t really train too often between that and even the All-Ireland.
‘I got an operation there before Christmas and the surgeon said to me if I was 19 again he’d probably give me a full knee.
‘But because of my age, he did a job on me that might give me another couple of years, hopefully. So, who knows?
‘I’m taking this year as it comes and, to be straight up about it, having come through the hamstring injury two years ago, and then the knee injury last year, I’m taking it game-by-game… I’m just praying my body lets me hurl as long as I can. That’s the honest truth.’
His form in the National League was that of a player determined to wring as much as he possibly can
from his potential and his team.
The injury was a significant personal blow, but the effect on Galway threatens to be as profound.
His skill as a free-taker is the main reason why Canning is second in the list of hurling’s top scorers, with his 27 goals and 423 points leaving him 65 points behind Henry Shefflin.
What the last two years brought to the fore, though, was his leadership. After years of hype, he was carrying the expectation and, at times, his team, too.
The extent to which the player has now become intrinsically linked with the fortunes of his team was reflected in the comments of Rory O’Connor, the Wexford forward, in recent days.
‘Unfortunately, he’s out injured now so it’s not going to just give hope to Wexford, you have Kilkenny and Dublin licking their lips, so it’s whoever wants it most now.’
O’Connor’s read, that the Leinster Championship has been levelled by Canning’s injury, was the disarmingly honest take of a young player whose candour may not survive many more headlines.
It was also logical, though. Galway play Carlow in their first Championship match on May 12, then resume with the visit of Wexford to Pearse Stadium on May 26. They have another two-week break before they go to Nowlan Park on June 9, and finish in Parnell Park on June 15.
It shouldn’t be a schedule that unsettles them, and ordinarily it wouldn’t.
On the morning of March 24, Galway were puttering through the League as their manager exposed new players to a demanding environment.
By nightfall, Canning was injured and their season was sent into a spin.
He is that good and that important. Galway have to try and hang on for as long as they can without him.