Extra games helping Galway to exploit their full potential

FORMER Galway defender Conor O’Donovan believes a run of championship games – something which was unavailable to the county’s senior hurlers during his own playing days of the 1990s – has allowed the Tribesmen to establish a consistency in team selection, which, in turn, has manifested in consistency in performances.

Galway’s move into Leinster in 2009 has no doubt levelled the playing field for the Westerners in their search for their first Liam McCarthy Cup since 1988, with O’Donovan asserting that the present system is now more beneficial to enabling the county’s players fulfil their potential.

Indeed, O’Donovan must wonder what if the Galway team he played with in the mid ‘90s – a side littered with All-Ireland senior, U-21 and minor medal winners – were afforded the same opportunities, particularly in 1996 when they won the National League title after defeating Wexford and Tipperary in the semi-final and final respectively.

However, when the All-Ireland semi-final in August came around against Wexford, who had defeated Kilkenny, Dublin and Offaly on their way to winning Leinster, Galway, as they would be for most of this decade, were under-cooked.

“I suppose, like all Galway teams at that time, we were by and large coming in cold where Wexford came in with huge momentum behind them after winning the Leinster title. It was their first title in almost 20 years and they were buoyed up by the whole emotion of winning it and so on.”

Physically, Galway were in great shape under Matt Murphy but O’Donovan, who played alongside current senior boss Micheal Donoghue and mentor Francis Forde, argues it was difficult for the management team and squad to compensate for the lack of championship game-time and the high intensity of that in training.

Having defeated a gritty Roscommon outfit in the now defunct Connacht decider (3-19 to 2-10), their reward was an All-Ireland quarter-final against New York, which they won pulling up on a scoreline of 4-22 to 0-8. Hardly ideal.

“Hurling back then was a lot different from today, tactically anyway. It was the team with the greater intensity and momentum that could win games. It was quite a reactionary game that time. So, Wexford kind of hit the pitch of the game quicker than we did and we struggled after that.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.