It’s high-time Tribe stood up and were counted

THERE comes a time in the lifespan of every team where they either do the business or simply get off the pot. That time for the Galway hurlers comes tomorrow in the Gaelic Grounds when they go head-tohead with the best team in the land.

I won’t keep you in suspense here, I don’t expect them to win but it is how they will go about losing which will ultimately define whether they have a future or not.

Truly, and I hope Galway folk do not take offence (but then having seen the paltry support which followed them to Limerick last weekend it would appear that there is not too many to insult), I have never seen a team take such an unconvincing route to an a national final.

They have played just one serious game in three months — which they lost to Wexford back in February — and since then they have not faced a serious team with their game-face on.

Yes, they did beat Waterford but some of the shine was taken off that 10-point comeback given that Derek McGrath played a dummy hand in the quarter-final making nine changes.

And Limerick? They can be called lot of things but let’s be clear they are about as close to being called a serious team as Jeremy Corbyn is of being called prime minister-elect in the UK.

The good news, though, is there are worse places to be. No one expects much from Galway tomorrow, certainly not in terms of winning but they should really expect something from themselves.

This team has been swanning around for the bones of a decade and all they have to show for it is a solitary Leinster Championship — and that really does not cut the mustard.

The only time that they can truly claim to have taken a stance with any conviction was off the field when they took out Anthony Cunningham within months of losing an All-Ireland final, one which they were firmly in charge of at half-time.

That might go some way to explaining why you could not sense much love for them last Sunday when, as they say in our parish, you would see more people at the killing of a pig than bother to follow them these days.

If that is hard on them, that is the way it is. In many ways, this spring has summed up their decade. The simple job in hand, given that they were the best team in the division by a country mile, was to gain promotion back to the top division and yet somehow they messed it up.

The hard thing after that should have been to reach the final and yet here they are. But now they have to go and prove in a pressurised environment that they really have the stomach for this.

I think they have the talent in the likes of Aidan Harte, Jonny Coen, Daithi and David Burke, Conor Cooney and, of course, Joe Canning but have they really got that cutting-edge mentality that the really top teams possess?

In many ways Canning sums up Galway — talented but yet never truly delivering on his potential.

I watched him go through the motions on a dreary dull day last Sunday and then in one exquisite moment, he hit the most wonderful score to remind us of his genius.

Thing is, great players like Henry Shefflin, with whom he was compared at the outset of his career, never relied on a single moment in a game to remind us of how good he was. It was his attitude more than his wrists that set him apart and there is a lesson in that for Canning. And for Galway, too.

It is not enough having talent because that is a given these days, but winning teams must also bring a ruthless edge with them on the field.

It is the one thing that has been missing for an age in all Galway hurling teams and they have to find it soon.

This is as good a day as any to find it and certainly if they want to get a measure of where they are at they could not ask to be meeting a better team.

Much has been made this week about the fractured thumb that rules Seamus Callanan out of this game, but you will find little fuss is being made of that inside the Tipperary dressing room door.

Sure, he is a loss but then what other manager can lean into his dug-out and pluck out John ‘Bubbles’ O’Dwyer as a replacement.

Callanan’s injury serves as a reminder of just how much quality that Michael Ryan has in his squad and after a spring being savaged by dead sheep, Galway are heading into the lion’s den here.

Apart from Bubbles, the McGrath brothers, Noel and John, come into this game having taken Wexford for four goals between them and the latter is probably the hottest strike forward in the game.

And they can get scores from every part of the pitch. It helps when you have got as potent a midfield pairing as Brendan Maher and Jason Forde, although it is questionable whether the latter will play with a two-match ban hanging over him — but the beauty here for Galway, and their manager Micheal Donoghue, is that there can be no hiding place.

Tipperary have shown time and again, not least against Waterford and Wexford, that those who seek cover in defensive systems get torched like all the rest, which means that you have no choice but to come out and play to stand any chance.

Galway will have to do that and more. They will have to lay down a physical marker here, show that they have that ruthless edge which will allow them compete man-on-man.

That might not be enough for them to win, but if they lose like that they might just announce to the rest of the world that there is a new number one contender in town.

You’d see more people at the killing of a pig