Take shackles off and kickstart this maroon evolution
Galway are a quality side but their persistence with a defensive system is keeping them out of the top tier
THE definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results. I am not sure if it was Albert Einstein or some high-stool bar-counter pilot who came up with that line, but I wish whoever it was would have a word with Kevin Walsh.
Don’t get me wrong, I have huge time for what he has done with this Galway team but right now they are a group running hard to stand still.
I was in Croke Park for their recent League clash with Dublin and there was one play that stood out for me which reeked off utter futility.
One of their defenders came charging out with the ball and, with no support, lumped the ball in Shane Walsh’s direction even though the latter was outnumbered three-to-one by Dublin defenders.
At the start of that game, and in a nod to the discomfort which Damien Comer gave the Dublin fullback line in last year’s League final and All-Ireland semi-final, Walsh moved his midfielder Thomas Flynn to the edge of the square
It didn’t really work but then Comer’s boots are big ones to fill and there is a lot more to playing full forward than being a big man with good hands.
The bottom line is: when Plan A failed, Plan B was to kick the ball away.
In one sense, Galway are the one team this spring whose League form should be analysed under a forgiving spotlight. They have hit the spring without half a dozen of their Corofin players, with Ian Burke and Liam Silke nailed on starters, while Kieran Molloy won’t be far behind come the summer.
On top of that, this is team that went to the League final and the last four of the Championship. Do they really need to push that hard this early?
It is hardly as if they have bombed thus far. Inside three rounds, they have almost reached the survival watermark with wins over Cavan and Monaghan.
However, their position in the table does not mask the sense that Galway are operating to the same blueprint that ultimately saw them come up short last year.
It was totally understandable that they took the approach they did 12 months ago. Having moved up a division, they needed to be competitive.
In the 2017 All-Ireland quarterfinal against Kerry, they were so porous defensively that it was literally like taking candy from a baby. Something had to be done.
The appointment of Paddy Tally to Kevin Walsh’s (above) backroom team ensured that they developed a defensive structure and in a season where they lost to just two teams – Dublin and Monaghan – you can’t argue that it did not work. But what was deemed successful 12 months ago will not measure up this year. Even if Galway manage a fourth win on the bounce over Mayo and land a third Connacht title in four years, it will count for little unless they show they can bare their teeth in attack as well as put their bodies on the line. In fact, their barometer should not be in beating Mayo but in emulating their neighbours in the way that they have managed to put the frighteners on Dublin. When you set the tape to measure how far they are away from achieving that you realise just how much they have to do. From what I saw in the flesh against Dublin and on the television against Monaghan, there is no evidence that they are even trying to evolve.
Park the fact that this is February and that they are missing so many players. This is precisely the time of the year when you expect teams to be rolling out something new in an effort to go to the next level.
Kerry, their opponents in Tuam today, are the perfect example. They are playing to a different game-plan now because they know if they don’t they will not lay a hand on Dublin.
Galway, developmentally, should be further down the line than Kerry. After all, they were emphatically better than the Kingdom in both their League and Championship meetings last year – but I am not sure that is the case.
They certainly possess the raw talent up front in terms of Comer, Burke and Walsh – although the latter is still too inconsistent for his own good – while Cillian McDaid’s return from the AFL has added to their depth.
The big questions are at the other end of the field, but again in terms of individual talent you could be looking at a full-back line of Silke, Sean Andy O Ceallaigh and Eoghan Kerin. That does not sound half bad. But does Walsh trust them? If he did trust his backs, he would surely have tweaked a zonal defence plan that is designed to find comfort in numbers.
The difficulty is that the best teams find it comfortable playing against such a system because Galway’s attacking threat is minimised.
The best way, as we have seen with Mayo and Monaghan in the recent past – and with Kerry this month – is to defend aggressively by putting man-on-man heat on the opponent in possession. This, in turn, facilitates turnovers higher up the field and makes for a greater attacking threat when the ball is won back.
Galway have not shown us that they have developed that side of their game, even though it seems they have the talent to do that.
But talent is only a small part of the equation, and mind-set is even more important.
Surely, when Galway look back at last year’s Allianz League final in Croke Park, they will have been consumed with regret that they did not go after a Dublin team that were reduced to 14 men after Niall Scully was sent off for a second yellow card with 20 minutes left.
They were just a couple of points down and it was there for them, but they could not find it in themselves to do that.
To me, that suggested a team that had become too focussed on a system and had forgotten that, ultimately, you have to go play to win big games of football.
That lesson better hit home very soon or this Galway team will find that their bright future is already behind them.