Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
Roles reversed from Christie’s playing days and he fears for Tribe in Croker cauldron tomorrow
GALWAY may be the hunter and Dublin the hunted, but you wouldn’t have to be greying too badly to recall a time when the roles were very much reversed. Given how frequently either county tends to win their respective provinces, it’s something of a quirk that they haven’t met in the Championship since 1983 while their League meetings haven’t been terribly frequent either. Tomorrow’s League final is just the seventh meeting since 2001 and Dublin haven’t won any of the last five, drawing three and losing the other two.
Paddy Christie was full-back on the last Dublin team to beat Galway 17 years ago.
A few months later Galway won their second All-ireland in four year while Dublin’s wait for their next Leinster title was slipping into a seventh season.
“They had three or four marquee forwards and were considered top three all the time,” says Christie (left). “If somebody had told me back then that a day would come years later where they disappeared almost out of existence in the bigger scheme of things, I would never have seen that coming to be honest with you.
“They’ve clawed their way back but they have had a huge fall from where they were. They were a serious outfit when I was playing now.
“You had Michael Donnellan in the half-forward line, Padraic Joyce full-forward usually, you had Derek Savage, Matthew
Clancy came in around that time,
Niall Finnegan was a good corner-forward.
“That’s some scattering of players. Every one of them would have made the Dublin team I played with and would have been one of our main players.”
Since Dublin’s dominance of Leinster began in 2005, later extending to the Allireland series, they’ve had just three managers. In the same period Galway have had six.
Christie takes a more simplistic view, however, of why they haven’t been able to meaningfully challenge since 2001.
“There’s always complaints about these managers but sometimes they don’t win because a lot of the time it’s just the calibre of players is just not there.
“At the moment with the likes of Kerry, they just look a little bit behind Dublin no matter what Eamonn Fitzmaurice does, no matter what tactic he employs and I
suppose with Galway over the last 10 years they’re a good bit behind but it looks like they’re coming the right way and even though they’re very defensive at the moment, it’s nice to see.
“I’d say in fairness to Kevin Walsh, he wants to try and get some victories under his belt and make sure, no matter what, that his team doesn’t get destroyed at any stage.”
Teams have set up defensively against this Dublin team, however, and still not managed to avoid a hiding, Tyrone in last year’s All-ireland semi-final being an obvious examples.
And Christie fears for Galway in that respect tomorrow.
“I’d fear for them because it might be coming a little bit too early for them and I think if they get a hiding it could do a lot of damage to them coming into Championship.
“What do they do if they go six, seven or eight down? Do they come out of their shell then? Come out and try and attack the game or do they just take a graceful beating?
“I would think for Dublin to do well this year, hopefully to win another All-ireland, I would like to see them get a really competitive game and make it very tough for them.
“There’s a possibility that will happen but I would be very fearful of the likes of what happened to Tyrone last year.”