Galway hurlers unfairly condemned

ANOTHER reality check for Galway hurlers – not that it was needed – in Thurles on Saturday evening has led to the usual chorus of criticism of players and management from some supporters. You’d almost swear a few of them get a perverse pleasure in knocking them down.

Logic is the first thing dispensed with. Exiting Tullamore the previous Saturday after the replay loss to Kilkenny, I overheard one outraged fan uttering the damning if nonsensical line that ‘they didn’t even try’. What planet are people like this on?

It’s a pity the critics don’t have a first-hand insight into the staggering levels of commitment required now to perform at inter-county level as, maybe, that might soften the vitriol. These hurlers on the ditch are clueless about the sacrifices demanded and the overwhelming pressures on players’ time

It also might have done them no harm if they were in the tunnel underneath the old stand in Thurles last Saturday to see how cut up the Galway players were at how the last 20 minutes had unfolded in an All-Ireland Qualifier they had fought bravely in for so long.

Team captain Joe Canning was hardly able to talk, his watery eyes demonstrating aptly how crushed he was by another big day reversal. His predecessor in that role, Fergal Moore, managed a few sentences but he wore a haunted look. Both men were utterly distressed and aching. Even as their former manager, I felt I was intruding on their grief.

The reputations of everyone in the Galway camp are again being held up to public ridicule. Supporters who weren’t even at the game have all the answers, know what should have been done, who should have played and who should have been left off. It’s easy to win matches from the armchair.

Nobody knows better, or are hurting more this week, than the players and management over their late implosion at Semple Stadium. Leading by six points with 20 minutes to go and getting beaten by nine is unacceptable by any standard of competition.

Even allowing for battle fatigue, Galway shouldn’t have been taken to the cleaners to that extent. Instead, they were buried under a flood of Tipperary scores and appeared to have no ideas or plan to limit the damage.

Undoubtedly, a number of players didn’t perform to the expected level and though a series of changes were made during the course of the game, the one obvious one – taking the struggling Ronan Burke out of full back – wasn’t. Bringing on Damien Hayes with barely three minutes remaining was also something of an insult to one of the county’s great servants.

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