Hurl or nothing
WATERFORD V GALWAY
ALL-IRELAND HURLING CHAMPIONSHIP FINAL FROM CROKE PARK
A DOZEN years ago, Galway turned up on All-ireland final day with a team of lightweights.
Five of their six starting forwards stood less than six feet tall.
The team that will run out at Croke Park today has four forwards who are 6ft 2in while Joseph Cooney is 6ft 4in.
In total, just two of the 18 Galway players who featured in last month’s semi-final win over Tipperary weren’t six-footers.
These days the Tribesmen certainly can’t be bullied and nobody sums up their transformation like goalie Colm Callanan.
Ten years ago he was a little known club ‘keeper with Kinvara doing the same training as the outfield players.
Then one night he did a personal session with former Clare goalkeeper Christy O’connor, younger brother of Banner great Jamesie, and everything changed.
Callanan recalled: “We did a good hour and a half of work. That was all new to me, this specialised stuff. I had just been doing whatever the outfield players were doing.
“My abiding memory of that night is going out to the car afterwards and sitting in it for about 20 minutes and not having the power to start it.
“When I eventually did, I drove down to the shop, got two bottles of Lucozade and necked them both. I sat there for another 10 minutes and then drove home in sheer shock. I was thinking, ‘I never want to see that man again’!”
The pair stayed in contact though and a decade on still work closely together. Callanan was called into the Galway squad by Ger Loughnane soon after that in 2007, and has spent much of his time since battling James Skehill (inset) for the No.1 jersey. He’s 35 now, a changed man and a physical specimen who runs his own gym.
But at the end of 2011 he thought his days with Galway were numbered when Anthony Cunningham axed him. The following year though, Skehill picked up a freak shoulder injury in training before the All-ireland final replay against Kilkenny and Callanan was drafted back in as cover.
He didn’t feature but his foot was back in the door and he’s remained in the camp since.
He recalled: “You’re thinking at the end of 2011, ‘This is the end of the line now’. I was resigned to that train of thought, I won’t lie. But I got back in and thankfully I was able to make a go of it again.”
Callanan started the 2015 final against Kilkenny. He picked up an All-star at the end of the year but not the All-ireland medal he craved despite leading by three at half-time.
He admitted: “We let it go. We’ve only ourselves to blame.”
Yet he recoils at suggestions that Galway lacked leaders that day, and might still do.
He said: “If there are no leaders on the team then how do you even get to finals and semi-finals and keep winning these games? I don’t think it can be done. There are good lads in the squad. David Burke and Joe Canning and these lads were around in 2012, never mind 2015.”
Galway certainly edge the experience stakes, as Kevin Moran and Michael ‘Brick’ Walsh are Waterford’s only survivors from the 2008 final.
Callanan said: “It’s the experience of it, just having gone through it all. It will count for a little bit, even the whole buzz around the occasion. You’re not going to get caught too much unawares on that side of things. We’re going to be ready for the situation and the huge crowd, hopefully we can deliver.”