‘Game of My Life’ honours Galway Legends

AS a new book on Galway hurling, Game Of My Life, hits the shelves of local stores, its author and Head of Sport at Galway Bay FM, Ollie Turner, says he is delighted with the reaction already to the publication.

In conversation with Turner, 25 of Galway’s greatest hurlers have relived and reflected on their best moments in the game. The Connolly brothers, John and Joe, feature, as do All-Ireland winners, Gerry McInerney and his son Gearoid. Others include Iggy Clarke, Sean Silke, PJ Molloy, Pete Finnerty, Michael Coleman, Alan Kerins and Ger Farragher.

Indeed, the majority of the hurlers interviewed hail from the 1970s to the present day, but Turner says when he began the project by speaking to former Galway hurlers in Báireóirí na Gaillimhe (past players association) and, in particular, Noel Lane, they insisted that their predecessors of the 1950s and ‘60s also be included.

“Noel was adamant one era that wouldn’t be left out was the pre-1970s, an era that Galway played for 10 years in Munster,” recalls Turner. “They are still held in very high regard, those lads.

“In many ways, they were seen as flying the Galway flag when it was so difficult and many of Galway’s best players were over in London, Boston and New York. So, they were really up against it in Munster and they took some awful hidings, but the fact that these lads kept togging out for Galway was remarkable.”

Indeed, with only one win – that over Clare – in their decade in Munster, Turner says it was incredible that some of Galway’s stickmen didn’t pack it in. Instead, the men of the ‘50s and ’60s continued to fight for the maroon and white.

“The best they could hope for was to keep the score down, to be gallant and heroic in defeat. That was something other hurlers, when they came to the good times in the mid to late 70s and early 80s, came to realise. They appreciated the immediate history of the players that came just before them and had laid the foundation.”

The two hurlers Turner interviewed were Jimmy Hegarty and Ned Dervan. Remarkably, neither men focused in on the victory over Clare, with Hegarty recalling a defeat to Limerick in the 1962 Munster championship and Dervan reminiscing on a National League semi-final loss to Waterford in 1963.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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