In-form Canning on guard for big test with Dublin

GALWAY may have been crowned National Hurling League champions last month but sharpshooter Joe Canning insists the Tribesmen are not blindfolded or blinkered to believe that they are the “finished article” just yet.

With the championship on the horizon, the real work, the Portumna man acknowledges, begins now. Yes, Galway’s emphatic League final victory over reigning All-Ireland champions Tipperary was both pleasing and encouraging – it’s another medal in the back pocket – but he states the league is not championship.

Indeed, Canning, an Audi Galway brand ambassador who earlier that morning had launched the Audi Inspiration 172 Sales Event, says that there has only been one date imprinted into the Galway set-up’s collective mind since the championship draw was made late last year. And that has been May 28th. Their Leinster SHC championship quarter-final fixture against rivals Dublin.

“We are looking forward to the match because that was the goal at the start of the year,” he reiterates. “We always set out the 28th of May as the date to be peaking so the National League (title) was just an added bonus. I suppose, with the league and the club games, it has now kind of crept up on us.”

Galway won that National League decider 3-21 to 0-14, with Jason Flynn (2) and Cathal Mannion netting the three goals and Canning, himself, hitting nine points, four from play. Given the form the Tribesmen were in, he confesses he would love to have kept that run going and jumped straight into championship from there.

However, club action called. Some may think that would offer players the opportunity to decompress after a rigorous Spring schedule ahead of the championship but someone as driven as Canning adopts a different attitude.

“You would like to keep it going. For me, the club is not even about decompressing. I nearly find there is more pressure in the club games because you are expected to come back and perform even better. Sometimes I find with the club games, it is much more than a physical challenge.

“Obviously, it is a 60-minute game so you are not going as long as a senior inter-county game (70 minutes) but, at the same time, mentally you have to work to get the mind right, to get up for it, and to try and perform for your club. That can be difficult enough to do, especially after coming off the high of winning a league title.”

It certainly didn’t affect his display last day out against 2015 county champions Sarsfields, with Canning amassing a personal tally of 2-9 in Portumna’s 3-17 to 1-11 victory. The four-time All-Ireland club winners looked a class apart.

Full interview in this week’s Connacht Tribune.