Galway’s snaring of Shefflin is riveting tale of the unexpected

Inside Track with John McIntyre

The process took over a fortnight longer than expected, there were many twists and turns, but Galway hurling eventually got their man – and what a spectacular coup it represents.

How Galway ended up snaring Henry Shefflin as their new senior team manager was hardly straight forward, but the appointment of the Kilkenny legend to succeed Shane O’Neill has energised the county’s hurling heartlands.

That appeared an unlikely scenario over two weeks ago when the Galway Hurling Committee Chairman Paul Bellew – addressing a specially convened meeting of club delegates in the Lough Rea Hotel – spelt out how the search for a new hurling supremo had stalled. They would have to start all over again.

With the bush telegraph and social media going into overdrive with some wildly inaccurate commentary and a vacuum in terms of reliable information, Galway had to now move quickly to retake control of the situation and quell rising discontent.

But few anticipated that, within ten days, the county would have enticed the sport’s most decorated player to come West, especially a man whose allegiance to Kilkenny has been without compromise and was already perceived as Brian Cody’s successor in the Noreside dug out.

When Galway had begun their quest to fill the managerial vacancy, the initial scouting led to four candidates emerging – former boss Micheál Donoghue, outgoing minor supremo Brian Hanley, an external former inter-county manager (not Davy Fitzgerald) and a local coach who didn’t have a big profile and withdrew from the race within 48 hours.

Family reasons prevented the ‘outsider’ from getting involved, while Hanley found it difficult to commit to the selection process with Donoghue’s shadow hanging over events. In the end, officials never even got to the negotiating stage with Donoghue who opted out due to a combination of family responsibilities and the timing of a possible return to the Galway sideline.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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