A Year ‘til sunday

THE 90s were some decade for Gaelic Games. It was hurling’s golden period. It was a time of breakthroughs in both codes. It was the era of Ulster’s rebirth and early ascendancy. It was a time when famines came to an end – Kerry’s eleven year drought and, crucially for our purposes here, Galway’s thirty year itch.

Patrick Comer’s film on Galway’s 1998 All Ireland winning season, A Year ‘Til Sunday, is one of those catching-lightening-in-a-bottle type deals. When Comer decided to make the film and when he got everybody he needed to on board, Galway boss John O’Mahony and his panel of players, they weren’t to know how the season would end.

They might have had an idea that this was a special bunch of players – boy was it – and they might have had a sneaking feeling that it just might be Galway’s year, but sport being sport they couldn’t have known for certain.

Indeed, Galway’s story could have ended as they attempted to get over the very first hurdle, against Mayo in Castlebar. Galway triumphed, of course, and the rest is history. For both team and film-maker.

That said such is Comer’s skill that, no doubt, he’d have managed to make something interesting out of the film regardless. Still, though, it’s much better that we do get to follow a team all the way to Croke Park on the third Sunday of September.

The film is nostalgic in all the right ways. There’s something very romantic about the old knock-out championship, the huge crowds those old knock-out games garnered compared to nowadays, the flags and the foghorns (that’s a sound of another era for sure).

There’s nothing hugely revelatory in Comer’s film. It’s simply a good story, told well with interesting characters. It’s a most enjoyable way to pass an hour or so of an evening – there’s some great football in it. It’s well worth watching and it’s available for free right now on YouTube.