Joe Canning, Unquestionably the GOAT

Iggy · May 5, 2023, 11:01am

Gaelic GamesColumn

Joe Canning: Galway may have been better off losing to Kilkenny

How well you recover for the next day is the key for everybody in this championship

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Every team Limerick face are treating the contest like an All-Ireland final. Photograph: Bryan Keane/Inpho

Joe Canning's face

Joe Canning

Fri May 5 2023 - 06:00

One of the beauties of the round-robin system in the hurling championship is that the story keeps changing. In the old championship format, teams could spend weeks thinking about a big win or a big loss before they had to play again. In this system, every result and every performance has a knock-on effect that teams must deal with quickly or risk getting stuck.

Take last weekend. Waterford played like a team that hadn’t been able to move on from their game against Limerick a week earlier. To me, it was a mental issue rather than a physical one. They had probably targeted the Limerick game for so long, and they had put so much energy into that performance, that they struggled to get beyond it.

Even though they lost against Limerick they would have been listening to compliments all week about how well they had played, and no matter how hard a player tries to block out the noise, that kind of stuff still seeps in. Waterford blew a chance to beat Limerick, and really gave themselves no chance of beating Cork by the way they played in the first half. Now their season is hanging by a thread.

How well you recover is the key for everybody. Clare only had a six-day turnaround after their loss to Tipperary, but the things that they needed to fix were obvious and they didn’t have to look hard to find positives. The 3-23 they scored against Tipp would have been enough to win every other game played in the championship so far. They managed to get themselves into the right frame of mind for the Gaelic Grounds last Saturday night and everything else flows from that.

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I said before the championship started that the biggest challenge for Limerick would be getting up for every game. All they were hearing was that they were going to walk the All-Ireland. On the flip side of that, every team they played was going to treat that game like it was an All-Ireland final. It is no coincidence that the best performances Clare and Waterford have produced this year, by a mile, have been against Limerick.

They need the three-week break that they have now. I still believe Limerick have the best team and the best panel, but it’s a long time since they produced two mediocre performances in the championship, back-to-back. I wouldn’t say their performance against Clare was flat, but it didn’t have the kind of edge that they normally bring. Without that, they’re not the same team. They’re around long enough not to panic.

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[ Nicky English: Clare raise the stakes as questions about the champions intensify ]

For Kilkenny and Galway there are no urgent consequences from their match in Nowlan Park, but everything has a context. The Leinster Championship is weaker now than it has been for years and everybody expects Kilkenny and Galway to meet in the Leinster final again. You won’t hear Kilkenny and Galway saying that but you can be sure it was somewhere in their minds.

The next time they meet will be in different circumstances but there will be stuff carried over from the game last week. Even though it was a draw, Kilkenny will feel like they lost the game. Not being able to manage a five-point lead late in the game, at home, against one of their biggest rivals, will sting. They’ll bring that grievance into a Leinster final.

This might sound funny, but you’d wonder if it would have been better for Galway to lose by a point, and carry that disappointment into a potential Leinster final down the road. Every team is looking for psychological edge, and in the round-robin system you can sometimes get that from a defeat. If Limerick go on to win the All-Ireland they’ll probably think that losing to Clare last weekend was the best thing that could have happened to them. That’s not how they’re feeling at the moment, but teams look for energy wherever they can find it.

Until the last quarter, there was a lot of shadowboxing in Nowlan Park. Good scores, nice hurling, but not the kind of intensity you would expect. Neither team wanted to lose, but unlike some of the games that are coming up in Munster, nobody’s life was on the line.

Galway’s Jack Grealish and Eoin Cody of Kilkenny during last weekend’s Leinster round-robin clash. Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho

Some of the changes that Galway made when they were chasing the game were interesting though. Conor Cooney and Conor Whelan would be seen as the leaders of the Galway attack, but both of them were taken off. In Conor Whelan’s case it was probably the first time he was ever taken off in a championship match when the game was still in the melting pot.

The way the game went, though, he couldn’t argue. It seemed that every time the ball went into him he was wrestling with Huw Lawlor and the Kilkenny full back was one of their better players on the day. It was a brave call by Henry Shefflin and his selectors to send on a couple of inexperienced young lads late in the game, but Liam Collins and Declan McLoughlin both came up with a score and justified their presence.

For Conor Whelan and Conor Cooney I’m sure being taken off in a game like that will make them think a little bit. I remember when we drew against Dublin in the 2015 championship I was taken off in injury time when the game was still on the line. Anthony Cunningham was the Galway manager at the time and on the following Tuesday night he took me and Joseph Cooney into the referee’s room before training in Athenry and laid it on the line for us.

I spent the rest of that week thinking I was going to be dropped for the replay. As it happened I started full forward, we won easily and I managed to get a few scores. Galway will need Conor Whelan and Conor Cooney to be at their best as the year goes on. Nothing was lost last Sunday; we won’t know for a while how much was really gained.

Cork and Tipperary in Páirc Uí Chaoimh is the outstanding game of this weekend. Even though they both have a win under their belts, it’s not a game either of them can afford to lose. Cork were good in lots of ways last Sunday, but I wasn’t impressed with their defence. They coughed up three or four clear goal chances after half-time, and if they do that against a goal-hungry team like Tipp, they won’t get away with it.

I don’t think Cork came out of the league knowing who their best six backs were and I still think they have problems in their full-back line. Cork have had less than a week to sort it out. That’s what this championship demands more than anything: quick solutions.

balbec · May 12, 2023, 9:28am

When I arrived in LIT in 2006 Davy Fitzgerald was in charge of hurling in the college. The team environment I walked into was like nothing I had experienced. I quickly realised that for matches all I needed to bring was my hurley, my helmet and my boots. Everything else was laid out and waiting for us in the dressingroom: socks, togs, jerseys, towels, shampoo – even a wet top if it was raining.

I joined the Galway senior panel while I was in LIT and the set-up there wasn’t as professional as the one we had in college. We used to do sessions at six o’clock in the morning, which would often just be ball work, but sometimes we would be taken out to Cratloe Woods on a bus. There was a track through the forest that came to about a mile and we used to do time trials on that loop.

Davy also used take us to the hill in Shannon where Clare famously trained under Ger Loughnane. We used to run up and down that hill all night, carrying fellas on our backs. It was brutal stuff.

For the hellish stuff there was no shortage of variety. He had access to a horse training facility in Broadford as well where we used to do our running on sand gallops. Most of it was on the flat, but some of it was up this massive hill. We might only have done the hill run three or four times in a session but it always felt like much more.

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Another time we went on a midwinter training camp to Lisdoonvarna, where we stayed in holiday homes. At four o’clock in the morning there was a knock on our doors and we were all dragged out of bed for a run through the village. Gavin O’Mahony, who was playing for Limerick at the time, pretended not to hear the knock and refused to get out of bed. The rest of us took off through this deserted holiday village in the dead of night.

There must have been some benefit to our physical fitness in doing all of this stuff, but really it was done to harden our minds and bring us closer as a group. Did it work? The only two Fitzgibbon Cups that LIT have won in their history were during Davy’s time in charge, and all the time that I was there we were contenders.

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Austin Gleeson could benefit from being given a specific role for Waterford. Photograph: Ken Sutton/Inpho

The point about Davy was that he was prepared to push boundaries and be different. There was no other Fitzgibbon Cup team training the way we were. He brought an intercounty mentality to a colleges competition and got fellas to buy into it. I’m still great friends with some of the guys I played with in LIT and for all I know that bond might have started on a sand gallop in Broadford.

I stayed in touch with Davy after college and we’re still in touch now. I’d have good time for him. People see his antics on the sideline and how he reacts to different situations and they form a certain view from a distance. I think Davy is quite happy to play up to the perception that he’s a bit mad.

But when you meet him and get to know him you see a completely different side to him. Do I agree with everything he does? Probably not. One of the Wexford players told me that they had 17 different puck-out variations when Davy was in charge of them and that’s just excessive.

But what I always admired about him was that he wasn’t afraid to try different ideas. They don’t always come off, but he’s prepared to try.

He’s facing a tough challenge with Waterford now. If they lose to Clare on Saturday they have no mathematical chance of qualifying. If it’s a draw, they would need to beat Tipp in their last game, and hope that a sequence of other results go their way. In terms of survival, beating Clare is their best chance of finding a way out.

Waterford’s performance against Cork was surprising from a team managed by Davy Fitzgerald. Photograph: Ken Sutton/Inpho

The performance they produced against Cork wouldn’t be nearly good enough in Thurles tomorrow. It was very unlike one of Davy’s teams. They were badly beaten on puck-outs and they left a lot of space for Cork to exploit. The rules for playing against Cork have been the same as long as I can remember: if you give them space, they’ll hurt you, if you get physical with them, they’re not so dangerous, they’re a bit windy.

Jack Fagan was asked to play sweeper and he seemed lost. I don’t blame him for that. It’s a very specialised role and it didn’t look like he had much experience of playing there. Tadgh de Burca, the guy he was replacing, has probably been the best sweeper in hurling since that position was invented. They really missed him.

[ Davy Fitzgerald on having to beat Clare, losing Tadhg de Búrca and the absence of Fergal Horgan ]

At least Waterford have had a couple of weeks to clear their heads. I suspect the Cork game came far too soon for them after their massive performance against Limerick and they just didn’t have enough time to move on. The one good thing they can take from the Cork game was how many goal chances they created after half-time. Clare have conceded seven goals in their two championship games so far, and Waterford are going to need goals on Saturday.

It will be interesting to see what they do with Austin Gleeson. He wasn’t fit enough to start against Limerick and Cork, but he came on in both games, and he made a real difference against Limerick. At this stage I think he needs a specific role rather than be given licence to float around.

I would play him at centre forward and use him as the focal point of the attack. He’s strong in the air, he’s a powerful runner with the ball and he’s never afraid to shoot. Any ball he picked up in that position would make him an immediate threat. The Waterford attack has been depending too much on Stephen Bennett and Dessie Hutchinson. Gleeson would change that dynamic and give Clare another problem.

Waterford desperately need to come up with something. That has been Davy’s speciality for as long as I know him.

StoneCold · May 12, 2023, 9:34am

Oooft

FlakeAway · May 12, 2023, 9:53am

Done GOM dirty. I know they’re good mates anyway.

myboyblue · May 12, 2023, 9:54am

You need to quote it all for the full effect

peddlerscross · May 12, 2023, 9:57am

Donal Og will apoplectic at this.

Keadyshouldhaveplayedin89 · May 12, 2023, 10:31am

Joe speaks the truth yet again

anon67715551 · May 21, 2023, 2:59pm

Jesus but Joe was looking a million dollars there on TSG. Straight from Louis Copeland’s window.
Joe knows how to pull off the dark shirt & tie combo.

flattythehurdler · May 21, 2023, 2:59pm

He does. Not a great deal of insight though.

anon67715551 · May 21, 2023, 3:04pm

Shur’ twas a great game, we saw the winning and losing of it ourselves. No need for pundits.

Thornhill · May 21, 2023, 3:05pm

When the questions were answered, Clare came up with the answers.

balbec · June 2, 2023, 5:02am

Joe squeals like a pig this week

When I analysed Limerick on the Sunday Game last weekend I did it in two segments; in one of them I was praising Limerick for the number of goal chances they created; the other was about how many crucial refereeing calls went their way.

Which segment do you think Limerick people were talking about?

I live just outside Limerick city, so people would see me around the place, but in the social media age you don’t need to meet people — or know people — to get feedback.

For a couple of days I took stick from Limerick supporters about my analysis of the infringements that were missed in the build-up to their two first-half goals, and my thoughts on their second-half penalty — which I wasn’t convinced was the right call.

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It was a water off a duck’s back to me. I got plenty of that stuff when I was playing. But I thought the reaction was interesting. I was being accused of bias when all the points I made were based on clear video evidence. They weren’t opinions; all I was doing was highlighting what took place, in black and white.

Did William O’Donoghue throw the ball for Cathal O’Neill’s goal? According to the slow-motion replays, there was no separation between the ball and his hand, as there would be in the act of making a hand pass.

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Did Aaron Gillane play the defender’s hurl before he caught the ball in the build-up to Seamus Flanagan’s goal? Yes, it’s clear on the screen. The referee missed it. Anybody watching the telly could see it. Plain as day.

Did I ever play a defender’s hurl and get away with it? Of course I did. The point I was making was that in top-level sports outcomes can be decided by very fine margins and that was the case in the Gaelic Grounds last Sunday. All of the big calls went Limerick’s way.

Did Damien Cahalane pick the ball clean off the ground? The replays showed clearly that he didn’t. The referee got it wrong. Limerick got a handy free from in front of the goal.

This was a one-point game. Looking back on the match, all of those calls were huge. Nobody said I was wrong, they just said I was biased. How can you square that?

Limerick’s William O’Donoghue and Robert Downey of Cork: video evidence suggests in the slow-motion replays that there was no separation between the ball and O’Donoghue’s hand in the lead up to Cathal O’Neill’s goal. Photograph: Ryan Byrne/Inpho

I guess it’s the nature of being a supporter that you’ll see what you want to see and believe what you want to believe. All of the feedback I got from outside Limerick was that my analysis of those incidents was accurate.

In top-level sports, teams bend the rules and test referees. It is the nature of the beast. Look at all the pulling and dragging that goes on off the ball. Every team does it, but it goes on behind the referee’s back and umpires or linesmen rarely intervene. Defenders make a percentage call on that kind of stuff. That’s what O’Donoghue and Gillane did as well: they made a percentage call on not being caught and they got away with their infringements.

[ Nicky English: Limerick vs Cork was as good a hurling match as I’ve ever seen ]

[ Formidable Limerick escape to victory after mesmerising Munster showdown ]

The mad thing is that my analysis of Galway, my own county, was much harsher than anything I said about Limerick, and there wasn’t a word about it. I watched that game and they looked like a team of individuals, especially in the first half. They were worse than useless.

There was no pattern to Galway’s play. Players were shooting on sight from halfway and you could see the frustration of the players on the inside line.

Daithí Burke came out afterwards and said Galway were an embarrassment in the first half, and he was right. Being 10 points down at half-time isn’t going to be good enough against Kilkenny.

I played with a lot of those lads and people wonder if it’s hard for me to analyse the games honestly. I’m okay with it. If I was still playing with Galway what I said the other night is what I would be saying in the dressing-room after the match or at training on Tuesday night. I won’t shy away from saying it now just because I’m outside the circle.

Galway’s Kevin Cooney in action against Dublin’s Paddy Doyle. Daithí Burke did not spare Galway harsh criticism for their first-half performance. And he was right. Photograph: Ben Brady/Inpho

I keep my distance from the lads because I don’t want them thinking that I’m snooping around for a bit of information. When I was playing my brother Ollie was an analyst on Sky Sports and he never asked me anything about what was going on in the Galway camp. He respected that privacy totally.

When I’m analysing Galway games in the media now it has to be a clean slate. I have to call it as I see it. There’s no other way to do it properly. People would see through you if you tried to do it any other way. It just wouldn’t be fair to anybody.

It was an amazing day to be working on the Sunday’s Game’s evening show. Incredibly intense and long. Myself and Donal Óg Cusack were the hurling analysts on the day, so we had to be in RTÉ at lunchtime before the Leinster games threw in at 2pm.

[ Dublin let 12-point lead slip in madcap draw with Galway at Croke Park ]

[ Wexford pull off unlikely survival after holding out against Kilkenny ]

The way it works we’d be in a room, with all the games on different screens, but we’d pick a game each to focus on. For the early games, for example, I did Galway vs Dublin and Donal Óg did Wexford vs Kilkenny, but there was so much going on in both games that you’d find yourself looking across at the other screen. Later on, when the Munster games were over, we watched Westmeath vs Antrim.

It was a mad day. You’re trying to get your head around everything you’ve seen, and come up with stuff that mightn’t have been noticed by the lads analysing the game live at the venues, or highlight things that they didn’t have a chance to go into in detail. There’s not a whole pile of time to edit the clips you want to show so you need to be really clear about the points you’re making.

A lot of people were asking why the Wexford-Kilkenny game wasn’t shown on RTÉ or on GAAGO. And I don’t know is the answer. I definitely thought it should have been shown. If that was the only game on telly that day we’d still be talking about it.

Anyway, as it turned out, nobody was short of things to talk about.

Ambrose_McNulty · June 2, 2023, 6:17am

Joe must have missed @Thomas_Brady 's deconstruction of the alleged Limerick fouls.

balbec · June 16, 2023, 7:59am

Joe puts the boot into Galway and Clare

Joe Canning: Galway’s road to glory now as tough as it comes

Final five seconds in Croke Park changes the whole narrative for the Tribesmen while Clare’s poor finishing cost them a coveted Munster title

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Cillian Buckley scores the winning goal in the dying seconds of additional time to snatch the Leinster title for Kilkenny and leave Galway crestfallen at Croke Park. Photograph: Morgan Treacy/Inpho

Joe Canning's face

Joe Canning

Fri Jun 16 2023 - 05:00

Just think about this for a second. What if Galway had managed to defend Kilkenny’s last attack in the Leinster final?

All that needed to happen was for a Galway player to kill the ball when it was pinging around in the corner. Put it out for a sideline, give away a free, lie down on the ball, even concede a 65; anything that took the ball out of circulation would have deadened the chaos and given Galway the opportunity to get organised.

They were five seconds away from winning the Leinster final, having come from eight points down against Kilkenny, of all teams. What would people have been saying? That Galway were serious contenders for the All-Ireland. Everyone’s outlook about them and the rest of their season would have been completely different.

There were two sides to Galway’s performance. For a long time Galway had a reputation for having a soft underbelly. That perception was there when I started playing for Galway, I’m not afraid to say it.

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When other teams went a few points up on Galway, they felt the game was over and Galway would fall asunder. That was the consensus. Kilkenny definitely would have felt that. Was there evidence to back up that opinion? No doubt about it.

I think that changed under Anthony Cunningham and Micheál Donoghue and we became harder to beat. And that’s the one thing that really encourages me about Galway this year, the way they’ve responded to falling behind in matches.

They were 12 points down against Dublin, they were six points down against Kilkenny in Nowlan Park, eight points down last Sunday – they even conceded a couple of very early goals against Wexford.

It’s like they had periods where they zoned out of matches, but you still had the sense they could turn it around. It showed me that there was character in the team, and you can’t go anywhere without that.

The other side of last Sunday’s performance was, to my eyes, they’re still not playing as a team. There is too much individual stuff going on. Damien Joyce used to say to us, ‘Make the guy beside you look better than he is’. That’s the essence of team play, what sacrifices are you prepared to make for your team-mate?

Looking at the Leinster final, I saw players not tracking their men, or not sensing the danger and picking up somebody else’s man. They weren’t hunting in threes and fours, like a team should be if everybody was on the same page and knew what they were doing.

I would love to take the Galway forwards and centre fielders and put them living together in a house for a fortnight, just to get them playing as a unit. There’s not enough cohesion in that part of the field. It doesn’t look to me like they’re playing to a pattern.

At one stage in the game Jason Flynn was isolated in the Kilkenny half of the field and they were playing the ball up to him directly, instead of running the ball out of defence.

Kilkenny’s Eoin Cody consoles Joseph Cooney of Galway after the Cats’ dramatic last-gasp escape act in the Leinster final at Croke Park. Photograph: Tom Maher/Inpho

Kilkenny exploited big spaces at the heart of the Galway defence for their four goals and there is no future in that for Galway.

TJ Reid knew that Gearóid McInerney was going to follow him everywhere, so he drifted out of full-forward and took Gearóid with him. Whether TJ came to that decision himself or the Kilkenny management had worked it out, it was a really smart strategic move. In the space that TJ left behind, Kilkenny went to town.

In the broader picture, Galway have played 11 championship matches in Croke Park since we won the 2017 All-Ireland and with just one win – against Wexford in 2020 – and three draws. That’s a crazy record.

But Galway still came from eight points down, and they were still five seconds away from being Leinster champions, and straight into an All-Ireland semi-final. Now, they’ve given themselves an incredibly tough route to the final. I can’t see Tipperary losing to Offaly tomorrow, and they will be Galway’s next opponents. The winners of that will play Limerick. As tough as it comes.

If they had been clinical, they would have had two more goals in the first half – on top of the goal chance they took – and against a team like Limerick, three goal chances is a lot. You must take them

Clare will have spent the last few days thinking about the road ahead as well. Whatever about the free they should have got to draw the match at the end, they had enough chances to win the game and didn’t take them.

If they had been clinical, they would have had two more goals in the first half – on top of the goal chance they took – and against a team like Limerick, three goal chances is a lot. You must take them.

Ryan Taylor ignored a pass to Tony Kelly – who was in acres of space and through on goal if Taylor had seen him – but Taylor later played a good ball to Mark Rodgers for the other goal opportunity. I don’t think Rodgers could have done any more: he hit the ball hard and low and bounced it in front of Nickie Quaid, who I thought made a brilliant save.

Not enough was made of that on Sunday, he had to turn his hurl and bring it across his body and get the ball up and away. In the context of the match it was an absolutely crucial save.

I’ve heard people saying during the week that Clare will learn from last Sunday’s defeat, but there’s only so much learning you can do. What more do they need to know? Their finishing wasn’t good enough and they left their full back line exposed. John Conlon was dragged into no man’s land and that was a tactical victory for Limerick.

When David Reidy came storming into the game in the second half, Conlon didn’t push up on him, but he didn’t sit back covering the D either. He needed to do one thing or the other.

In the first half, Clare managed to put a reasonable amount of pressure on the ball going into Aaron Gillane and Seamus Flanagan, but in the second half Gillane got some of the nicest ball he ever got. Cian Nolan at full-back was only part of the problem. Conor Cleary would have struggled too with the quality of ball that was going in.

The outcome for Clare is that they’ll probably be playing Dublin in the quarter-final and Dublin will relish that. For Clare, the exams keep coming. By now, they must be finished with learning.

Raylan · June 16, 2023, 8:35am

Joe isn’t saying anything there that supporters of either county have already posted here

Cheasty · June 16, 2023, 8:40am

Crutches · June 16, 2023, 9:01am

@flattythehurdler mansion in Galway now starting to make sense

balbec · June 23, 2023, 7:42am

Joe’s fear for Galway.

Joe Canning: Galway under serious pressure as they brace themselves for Tipperary test

Tipperary have already made significant progress under Liam Cahill but the Tribesmen’s defeat in the Leinster final means they badly need a big scalp

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Henry Shefflin: has had plenty of time to work out his best Galway team and to settle on a style of play. At this stage it’s about delivering results in big matches. Photograph: Morgan Treacy/Inpho

Joe Canning's face

Joe Canning

Fri Jun 23 2023 - 05:00

The only thing that separates Portumna from Tipperary is the bridge crossing the Shannon.

Lorrha is on the other side, the home place of Patrick ‘Bonner’ Maher, and Ken Hogan and John McIntyre.

People’s lives in the two places are intertwined in many day-to-day ways, as you can imagine; a lot of kids from Lorrha go to school in Portumna, Lorrha people would come in for their shopping, some of them would work in Portumna, the usual stuff.

In hurling, though, it meant that losing to Tipperary was the thing we feared most. You knew that you’d hear all about it on Monday and you’d be living with the consequences for days afterwards. On the other hand, when we won, our Tipperary neighbours would go missing for a little while. That was the nature of the beast.

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I don’t know what Tipperary hurling people thought of Galway over the years but, in our minds, we had a very clear picture of them. We knew for certain that they didn’t fear us, under any circumstances, but we also knew that we weren’t alone in that position.

Tipperary hurling people had a confidence about them which meant they didn’t believe they were inferior to anybody. In sport, that feeling gives you a head start. Whatever else they bring to the Gaelic Grounds tomorrow they will bring that confidence.

Pause

Unmute

Most neutrals will probably see it as a 50-50 match, and over the last 20 years nearly every Galway-Tipperary match has gone down to the wire. I played in three All-Ireland semi-finals against them that were one-point games – three years in a row. It wouldn’t surprise anybody if tomorrow’s game came down to one score, either way.

But Galway and Tipperary are coming into this game from different positions. There is usually a lot of pressure on the Tipperary team and management to deliver results, but I don’t sense that at the moment. Tipp have had a couple of quiet years under different managers and their supporters understand that Cahill is trying to build a new team with young players and they can see his stamp on it already.

Galway’s Greg Lally consoles Tipperary’s Niall O’Meara after Galway’s one-point win in the 2015 All-Ireland semi-final at Croke Park. Three years in a row just one point separated the teams in semi-finals. Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho

Until the Waterford game, their performances in Munster had been good or very good, and I think the Tipperary public were satisfied with how the team was going.

As long as people can see progress, a manager in his first year will have a certain amount of forgiveness too. If Tipp were to lose tomorrow with a reasonable performance I don’t think there would be too many complaints from the Tipp supporters about the season overall.

Galway, though, are under a different kind of pressure. The general perception around the place is that they should have closed out the Leinster final. Our overall record in the Leinster championship for the last few years hasn’t been good enough, and whatever feelings Galway people have towards the Leinster championship, allowing Kilkenny to win four titles in a row is a reflection on Galway’s performances too, whether we like it or not.

Henry Shefflin is well into his second year as manager now which means there is more pressure to deliver. He has had plenty of time to work out his best team and to settle on a style of play, and at this stage it’s about delivering results in big matches. If Galway were to lose tomorrow, anything could happen.

Both teams have issues to work on. Cahill’s teams have always targeted goals, and there is an emphasis on running at the opposition from centrefield up. When they looked at the Leinster final they would have seen a Galway team that conceded a lot of space in key areas and was vulnerable to runners. Galway coughed up four goals – which was the third time in this year’s championship that they conceded more goals than they scored.

Galway’s Gearóid McInerney in action against Kilkenny’s John Donnelly during the Leinster final. There’s no way McInerney will be dragged out of full-back against Tipperary the way he was in that game. Photograph: Morgan Treacy/Inpho

I can’t see Galway being as naïve in their defending again. There’s no way Gearóid McInerney will be dragged out of full-back, the way he was in the Leinster final. But even allowing for all that, Tipp will have goals on their mind.

The problem for Tipp, though, has been defending. The only game in Munster when they didn’t concede a goal was against Limerick. They conceded three goals against Clare and four against Cork. They even conceded 3-18 against Offaly in the preliminary quarter-final last weekend and Galway wouldn’t need much more than that to win on Saturday.

Tipp ended up beating Offaly by a record score and it might have seemed like a pointless match. The second half was played in a storm and it’s hard to imagine that the Tipperary management learned anything new about their players. But having a game was still a huge benefit to them. They had a couple of weeks to get over the Waterford defeat and they had some time for important players to get over their injuries.

Jake Morris and Jason Forde both got a game into their legs and Gearóid O’Connor was able to come on. Cathal Barrett didn’t make the squad, and I don’t know how he’s fixed for this weekend, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the extra week makes a difference to him.

Tipperary’s Jake Morris in action against Offaly’s Ben Conneely during the big victory at Glenisk O’Connor Park. Morris and Jason Forde got a valuable game into their legs. Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho

Galway have only had a fortnight to get over the Leinster final and until you go out on the pitch again you don’t really know what impact a defeat like that will have on the team – mentally more than anything. That’s a big question hanging over them tomorrow.

From a Galway point of view, I’m really worried about this game. In my heart, I’m hoping they can pull it off, but my head is saying something different.

balbec · June 30, 2023, 6:46am

Joe has a pop at Tipp, fails to hide his bitterness at being bullied out of it by a few young fellas from Limerick in 2018 and ignores Clare completely.

Joe Canning: Tipp pay ultimate price for failing to balance valuable resources

‘Managing your mental energy and your physical energy during a tough, intensive campaign is a serious challenge’

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Tipperary’s Alan Tynan and Darren Morrissey of Galway struggle for the sliotar during the All-Ireland hurling quarter-final. File photograph: James Crombie/Inpho

Joe Canning's face

Joe Canning

Fri Jun 30 2023 - 05:00

Getting it right on the day is not an exact science. In every aspect of preparation, GAA teams have more access to expert help than ever before, but sometimes a team is flat, over the top, or in the wrong frame of mind and when the ball is thrown in there’s no getting away from it.

That happened to two teams in Limerick last Saturday. I watched Dublin come out of the tunnel under the Mackey Stand before their match against Clare and I couldn’t believe they were walking. This was an All-Ireland quarter-final, the biggest game of their season; I expected them to burst on to the field, full of energy, mad to get stuck in.

Watching them I was thinking, ‘what’s their mentality?’ One of the things every player can control is body language. Your team-mates can see it, your opponents can see it. Poor body language puts you on the back foot straight away. That wasn’t the reason why Dublin lost, but their mentality was a big part of the reason why they didn’t put up a bigger fight. It looked to me like their heads weren’t in the right place.

Tipperary weren’t in the right place either. Liam Cahill said he could see after 10 or 15 minutes that they had no spark. Tipp were so bad that Galway should have beaten them by 10 or 12 or 15 points.

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I thought Tipp had a right chance, and judging by some stuff I heard on a Tipperary GAA podcast before the match, that was probably the general view in Tipperary too. The lads on the podcast were talking about how many goals Jake Morris and Mark Kehoe were going to get. Maybe the Tipp players were picking up these vibes around the place.

As it turned out, Morris and Kehoe failed to score; Kehoe was taken off at half-time, along with Seamie Callanan, who also failed to score. Noel McGrath was taken off in the second half, having been a key player for Tipp all season. Galway targeted him with Sean Linnane and he really got inside McGrath. It was a meltdown for Tipp in every way except on the scoreboard.

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After the way Waterford’s season fizzled out last year, questions were asked straight away about Liam Cahill’s ability to manage a team’s freshness during a compressed season. Everyone knew that Tipperary’s training in November and December had been savage. The feeling among the Tipp players last year was that they hadn’t been fit enough, and the new management obviously believed they had ground to make up.

Tipperary’s Noel McGrath at close quarters with Gearóid McInerney of Galway during the All-Ireland hurling quarter-final at the TUS Gaelic Grounds, Co Limerick. File photograph: James Crombie/Inpho

That fitness showed during the League and in the first three games of the Munster championship, but when they needed performances against Waterford and Galway there was very little in the tank. When Galway got physical last Saturday a lot of the Tipp players didn’t want to know about it. Cahill demands aggression from all his teams, but on this occasion, it just wasn’t there.

Tipp are going to have a tough six months reflecting on this. Cahill said afterwards that he was going to freshen up the panel for next year. Some of the older players and leaders in that dressing-room might walk away, which will leave big holes to fill.

When you boil it down, Tipp have won just three championship matches against Liam MacCarthy teams since they won the All-Ireland in 2019: two games against Clare and one against Cork. For a county with their resources, and their recent history of U-20 success under Cahill, that record is worrying for them. Will they have to rethink how they approach their loading during the season? Definitely.

Sometimes, though, it doesn’t even come down to that. In hindsight, when Galway lost the 2018 All-Ireland final to Limerick, we were probably out of gas. It was our ninth championship match of the summer, including replays in the Leinster final and the All-Ireland semi-final.

We played three round-robin games in the Leinster championship on successive weekends, and there were just seven days between our two draws and the replays. Really intensive bursts. We ended up with just a fortnight to prepare for the All-Ireland final when Limerick had three weeks.

An excited Tipperary manager Liam Cahill on the sideline during the All-Ireland hurling quarter-final against Galway. File photograph: James Crombie/Inpho

Every team only has a fortnight between the All-Ireland semi-finals and finals now and that’s a real challenge. That extra week makes a huge difference. In practical terms, it means you have more time to rest in the days after the semi-final, and more time to taper in the final week. Between the two middle weekends, you will get four serious sessions done. With a two-week build-up, you’re only going to be able to fit in two serious sessions.

In the lead-up to the 2018 final we didn’t realise we had gone over the top. You’re not thinking in those terms. You’re trying to keep all negativity out of your mind. But I went into that game carrying an injury, and so did Daithí Burke and Gearóid McInerney, and a couple of others. We just didn’t have time to recover.

Whatever about your physical state, you’re doing everything you can to get yourself into the right frame of mind, and there’s no fixed, guaranteed way to achieve that. We didn’t have any beef with Limerick at the time, but for a championship match you need something to steel your mind. You need a bit of spice. It’s not a question of hating the opposition, but having a reason to dislike them is useful.

Tom Ryan, the former Limerick manager, wrote something in his newspaper column that Micheal Donoghue spotted, and he gave us all a copy of it to read. Ryan had nothing to do with the Limerick team we were playing, but Donoghue just wanted our blood to be boiling a little bit. Even with all the science available to managers and players now, that kind of stuff still goes on: searching for an angle.

On the day, we just didn’t have enough in the tank. We weren’t bouncing off the ground, the way you should be. We didn’t have as much bite as Limerick. The other games had taken too much out of us. Once the match starts, there’s no way of fixing that.

In the new championship system, managing your mental energy and your physical energy during a tough, intensive campaign is a serious challenge for everyone. Tipperary failed to manage that, and last Saturday they paid a heavy price.

Hurling Championship 2023 Tipperary GAA Galway GAA Dublin GAA

Bod95 · June 30, 2023, 7:31am

The League 1 county