Better to die on your feet than live on your knees.
Oh.
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Richie Power Jr was as good or better, intrinsically, as any of them.
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Wasn’t Joe Canning’s debut in a knockout qualifier against Cork which was also Galway’s first championship game in 2008? They’d done away with the qualifier groups from the mid 00’s which afforded you a chance to lose one and still progress. Very harsh on Galway before they were allowed into Leinster in 2009, there was some buzz before they played Kilkenny that year.
Ger Canning always comes good on the big days in Croke Park.
He phones it in half the time but nobody can call a game like him when it comes down to it.
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Ciarán Murphy: Goodbye Joe Canning, you made the people happy
Galway great’s exceptional exploits leave hurling fans with special memories
about 7 hours ago
Joe Canning looks on as his late point from the Cusack Park sideline seals victory for Galway over Tipperary in the memorable 2017All-Ireland semi-final at Croke Park. Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho
As the streamers flew down from the top of the Hogan Stand, Joe Canning found himself sharing his moment of total hurling vindication with a young girl who had just lost her dad.
Tony Keady died three-and-a-half weeks before the 2017 All-Ireland final, and as his family were welcomed on to the pitch at the final whistle by Michéal Donoghue, his only daughter Shannon was momentarily left alone and a little overwhelmed.
According to Keady’s biography, “she was looking around at everything, engulfed by the noise and the drama, and then Joe Canning gave her a hug. They started talking. The presentation of the cup was underway in the stand in front of them and Shannon was looking up and time passed, and she suddenly realised that Joe Canning was still standing by her side”.
Canning stood beside her for five minutes. He was there beside her when Hill 16 started chanting her father’s name. Of all the ways that Canning imagined spending his first five minutes as an All-Ireland champion, he would have done well to have come up with that scenario, but it was a beautiful, noble thing to do.
That was the day Joe got the All-Ireland medal he ‘deserved’, as if that’s a metric that exists in the world. He hit the last five scores of the 2017 All-Ireland semi-final win against Tipperary. No other Galway player scored for the last 23 minutes of the game. He might have deserved an All-Ireland medal, but nevertheless he went out and took it.
By then we could say that he had exceeded even the wildest expectations put on him as a kid – the sort of expectation that realistically only David Clifford could empathise with.
He won two All-Ireland minor medals, and lost a third final in his last year in the grade. He was man of the match in an All-Ireland club final – as a 17-year-old. He was a sensation.
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Conor Hayes considered calling him into the Galway panel after that club final, and his successor Ger Loughnane did likewise. Joe resisted. He wanted to play minor and U-21 for as long as he could. The pressure became a little unseemly.
By the time he did make his senior championship debut, still a teenager, it seemed woefully overdue. What followed – the 2-12 against Cork and Diarmuid O’Sullivan that is seared onto people’s memory, the Young Hurler of the Year award, the All Star – was almost other-worldly. Galway were a rabble, but they had Joe (even by then the surname was superfluous).
Galvanising effect
Through the years Galway wandered. They got to the 2012 All-Ireland hurling final, and Canning hit a goal in the opening minutes so good that the stadium nearly fell in on itself. That was telling, in its own way. To beat Kilkenny that day, it was felt Galway would need divine intervention – and that’s exactly what they got in that moment.
That old line about a goal by DJ counting for four points, such was its impact on his Kilkenny team-mates, was equally true of Joe. If you have a miracle-worker in your midst, and he starts cracking his knuckles over beside the loaves and the fishes, it tends to have quite a galvanising effect.
He walks away, having become the championship’s top-scorer of all time last Saturday. He leaves some extraordinary memories. The goal in the Leinster final of 2015, when he caught a ball over his head while turning, and then swivelled in one swift movement to lash it to the net, was an exploration of the outer reaches of what was possible on a hurling field.
The insouciant no-look hand-pass to David Burke for a score against Cork in a qualifier in Limerick in 2011 was beautiful self-expression. The 4-7 against Clare in an under-21 semi-final that Galway ended up losing. 1-16 in another losing effort in a Fitzgibbon Cup final.
The sideline cuts! 27 in the championship, 19 ahead of his nearest competitor, each of them a study in concentration and artistry.
The day in the 2014 Leinster championship when he exchanged injury-time, under-pressure, from-the-sideline points with Henry Shefflin to force a draw, in a one-minute spell of hurling freighted with about as much subtle subtext as a Vin Diesel movie.
But the mind returns again and again to that winning point against Tipperary in 2017. The blind panic Johnny Coen must have felt as he gathered the ball on the Cusack Stand, with the clock almost dead. He turns, as if he’s heard a shout.
And there stands Joe, calmly beseeching him to give him the ball, his hand open to receive the pass, almost in supplication. The shot is away. The place goes wild. James Crombie’s magnificent photo, reproduced here, as Joe wheels away. He can’t help stealing a long glance at the ball as it goes over, the Cusack Stand in paroxysms behind him. Who couldn’t love this game? Who couldn’t love this player?
So goodbye, Joe – you made the people happy.
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TBF thats a great article.
Was gas to see lads use that moment with the young Keady girl as a stick to beat Joe with at the time. There’s some gas cunts out there all the same.
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@Fat_Pox had a torrid time trying to mark a young Joe Canning at the Kilmacud Sevens once upon a time.
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Fucker kept me scoreless.
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Did you return the compliment?
ah not in the least. I think it was 2010 and Portumna were in their pomp. We were up for the final and the 7s was just to keep us busy for the Saturday morning. We actually had to share a dressing room with them out in Glenalbyn. Our lads had cans and going out clothes in our bags. They had about 3 kitmen with soup, sandwiches, ice… they were set up for the day while we were set up for a session.
We won our first match vs Croom I think and the lad over us for the day actually had notions of us beating them. Anyway I trotted out for the game. The options were Damian Hayes or Joe. I trotted over to Hayes and in my opinion did very well on him for 5 mins until I was subbed. Came on a few mins later and picked up Joe. The Portumna selectors obviously spot a duck and send a high ball down between us. Joe catches, brushes me aside and buries it. 20 seconds later the same scenario arises again. I decide not to compete in the air but end up rugby tackling him to the ground. He buries the free from about 25 yards actually bursting the net. I got the curly finger not long after.
We actually gave then their closest game of the whole tournament. I think they “only” beat us by 10 points.
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And the club never went back to play the sevens ever again.
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I played the Jude’s sevens that year. I remember standing at the bus stop after waiting for the bus into down and everything from my nipples down hurt.
Having had great notions of pints about town after, I had three and was in bed exhausted by 10pm
It was a great night. Had great craic with Pete Finnerty late that night. He showed up on the Sunday Game the following night “tired and emotional” and never made the TV again.
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That was a great night. Finnerty in this red T-shirt with Hurling on the front in the font of Carling Beer. And it bet on to him.
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Who better to ask whether Joe Canning is a hurling legend than a hurling legend himself?
The great Tommy Walsh joined told Off The Ball to discuss the retirement of Canning, and gave a fascinating insight into what set him apart.
Canning revealed that he had decided before the start of this year that he was heading into his final season.
“I had it in my head all year that this would probably be my last year,” he said this afternoon. "I don’t want to overstay my welcome, or be there as a token gesture.
“I told the boys after in the dressing room, that was it, so have to keep my word a bit on that one.
“I will keep playing with Portumna, but that’s me finished with Galway."
Tommy Walsh on Joe Canning
“Skill. He was deceivingly fast,” Walsh said when asked what set Joe Canning apart.
"I always thought Joe was powerful fast, but what I always come back to with Joe is skill. If he was growing up now, he would have missed one or two county finals, and perhaps a club All Ireland, because of the age.
"He won a county final or two before he reached 18, and a club All Ireland. Not many people get to do that, no matter what size you are. You only have to go back to his debut season in 2008, when he was marking ‘The Rock’ - was it about size with Joe?
“He was on Diarmuid O’Sullivan, I have him as number one in the hardest players to play the game. He scored 2-12 that day. That great Cork team were in their pomp.”
Skill
Walsh reiterated that technical ability went some way to setting Joe Canning apart.
"What it will always go back to me with Joe is skill. The sideline cuts, he scored four of them in last year’s All Ireland semi-final. He scored 1-16 in a Fitzgibbon Cup final that they lost […] he scored another four sideline cuts.
"Look at the all-time Championship cuts - he has 27 of them - the next on the list still playing today is Austin Gleeson with six.
"I’ve been practising sideline cuts since lockdown came in and I still can’t get them 20 or 30 yards over the bar! Some lads have this insane talent, and then they back it up with years and years of hard work - Joe did that.
"The mental side of the game as well, the pressure that the man was under since he was 16 years of age. No player, in my opinion, has gone through that type of pressure.
!You go to our Kilkenny team and Henry Shefflin. Henry had Eddie Brennan to take the pressure off him; JJ, Richie Power, Eoin Larkin, TJ - serious hurlers. You go onto the Tipperary team and Eoin Kelly, one of the greatest hurlers, had Lar Corbett and then Seamie Callanan and Noel McGrath. (CC @the_man_himself )
“With Joe, it always was ‘How did Joe play?’ if they lost or won. Whether they won or lost, it was about him all the time. To be able to deal with that was tough but he handled it with great humility.”
The greatest ever?
Walsh spoke about where Joe Canning features in the debates about the greatest hurlers.
"He’s going to be in the conversation, depending on the type of hurler that you followed, liked or modelled your own game on. But he is definitely up there, he he is in the conversation as one of the all-time greats.
"You only have to look back at some of the scores, some of the wins - he has basically won everything in the game. On a personal level, as Hurler of the Year, Young Hurler of the Year, a man of the match in a club All Ireland final at 17. The list goes on and on.
"He is universally-loved. No matter what county you’re from […] the young fellas, the old fellas - they absolutely adore the skills he brought to the game.
"Above all, the humility he brought. He was lucky enough to be reared in a hurling and farming background so you could never get too far ahead of yourself!
"His brother, Ollie, was one of the best corner-backs to ever play the game. The stardom was in the family already so it was that bit easier to not get ahead of himself
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As expected an honest and fair appraisal from a fellow great and equally humble individual.
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