Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Canning: Last year’s failure will only fire up the Tribesmen
OLLIE CANNING expects to see the Galway hurlers come out of the Championship blocks with an edge against Wexford after failing to get out of Leinster last year.
Canning feels that the Tribesmen are at something of a disadvantage compared to their main rivals due to a change of manager, with Shane
O’neill replacing Micheál Donoghue in November.
But he also believes that with a settled panel, O’neill should have the ammunition to get Galway to the All-ireland series.
There is no round-robin system in place this year. Instead, the Leinster champions go straight ht into the All-ireland semi-final and the losing provincial finalists go into the All-ireland quarter-finals.
The other three teams go into the All-ireland qualifiers minefield.
“You have to hit the ground running this year,” said Canning (inset). “I wouldn’t like to be the team going through the back door or qualifiers because then you have games practically every weekend, with very little recovery time.
“For Galway, will there be a bit of a bounce back after not qualifying out of Leinster last year? There has to be.
“It has to be in players’ minds that they have to come to the games fully prepared. Wexford will gain good confidence from their Leinster win last year.
“The other thing, Davy Fitz has been with Wexford for a number of years now. They’ve got their gameplan pretty much down.”
And Canning is hoping his younger brother Joe (below), still Galway’s talisman, will stay injury-free to lead the charge.
“The last couple of seasons have been tough, he has picked up a couple of injuries,” he said.
“Portumna were finished up pretty early, so it hasn’t been as hard as other years where you’re trying to balance county training, club training.
“I feel Joe will come into this year’s campaign very fresh. By all accounts he’s looking forward to getting back into it with the whole panel back.”