Before Cunningham took over, Galway hadn’t been near an All Ireland semi-final for a decade. He brought Galway back into the big time and was pegged under a bus because his players did not want to look in the mirror at their failings.
The results were good enough for Galway, the county board were keen for him to stay on but he decided to pack it in due to the scurrilous actions of the majority of the Galway panel. It is no business of the players to dictate who should be in charge.
Why do you persist in pedaling false facts and untruths? Cunningham took over in late 2011. Galway were in the All Ireland Final in 2005. They beat Kilkenny in the 2005 semi final.
It’s actually quite remarkable the amount of new players Tessio blooded in his time in charge and the rebuilding job he did.
He got to All-Ireland finals with what were significantly different teams in 2012 and 2015.
If you look through the starting Galway 15 from this year’s final, 10 of them were given their chance by him.
A huge amount of the Galway team were born in 1993 or later. A few of the slightly older players got their chance under him at under-21 level.
To get such a young team to beat a highly experienced and motivated Tipperary team with a wall to wall performance, and then dominate what was still a great Kilkenny team in the first half of the final - what Tessio did in 2015 was actually a superb managerial feat.
Galway hurling owes him a serious debt of gratitude. He was quite literally its Salvatore and had he not taken over it’s very likely Galway would not be in the place they are now.
There’s loads of lads seething that Galway won — You’ve lads slagging off grieving widows, others trying to diminish feats of current management and players and then @Bandage just won’t comment at all he’s so irate— I’d take it all as a huge compliment to the nogra.
Noel Lane probably still does after the shabby way he was treated by the clubs in Galway after beating Kilkenny to reach an All-Ireland final in 2001 and then thrashing Cork and losing by a single point to Clare due to a great Colin Lynch winner in 2002.