Galway selector Cullinane says focus is on producing big final performance

THERE was a sense of purpose about Galway as they convened at Loughgeorge last Saturday week prior to the All-Ireland U21 semi-final against Kerry.

Players were nice and quiet during the pre-match meal. Upstairs at the team meeting, they were really focused. There was no giddiness; lads were getting in the mood, getting their matchday game-head on. That sense of purpose was evident in Ennis, too.

“We had this confidence. The dressing room was very calm. We’ve a lot of big leaders. Physically we’ve a strong team. We just felt, there didn’t seem to be any fear in them. Whether that came from us, or whether that was an inbuilt thing, or a bit of both, but they were super confident,” said Galway selector Barry Cullinane.

“To be honest, when we looked at Kerry, they didn’t strike a huge amount of fear into us. We knew we had a team of players that had a Galway style of football – good kicking, good forwards – and we knew if we got enough ball around the middle that we had the forwards to do the damage.”

The Claregalway clubman joked, “Jaysus, if we knew that!”, when asked how to repeat against Dublin the purposeful build-up and start they got against Kerry when they hit 1-7 after nine minutes; and he agreed fear shouldn’t be a factor.

“I don’t think they will (fear Dublin). I suppose, Dublin are a bit of an unknown. We would have played Kerry down through the years. They would have known the names, they slip off the tongue. Dublin are a little bit different. They’re a bit of an unknown quantity, bar what we’ve seen from them on videos.

“To replicate it, we’ve tried to do the exact same stuff we did before the semi-final. We didn’t try to change anything. Sometimes, I think teams when they get to a final, they say ‘let’s change everything and let’s do everything different’. We’ve tried to keep it as low-key as possible, just treat it as another game and reinforce the ability that our lads have in the team.”

Cullinane was a loyal midfield soldier for Galway since his debut season in 2004 right up until 2012 when he called it a day.

Still relatively young – he turned 33 this week – Cullinane has had five operations on his knee, which “gives me a good bit of grief”. He said he doesn’t particularly miss playing, although he did initially, and he’s relishing his involvement on the side-line.

Cullinane and Gerry Fahy struck up a relationship first in 2003 when NUIG won the Sigerson; the former as player, the latter as manager.

They joined forces again in 2016, and guided NUIG Freshers to an All-Ireland semi-final, and this is his second season soldiering as trusty selector with Fahy over the Galway U21s.

Cullinane, though he had done a bit with Turloughmore hurlers, was used to being in the thick of the action rather than being a mentor, and he’s had to adjust.

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