Helebert highlights honesty of effort as the key to victory

Date Published: {J}

CIARAN TIERNEY

Same venue, same occasion, different world. They put the floodlights out early on the Galway supporters, management, and players as they celebrated on the Semple Stadium pitch on Saturday night – and quite a few of those present must have wished that the lights had gone off at some stage during that infamous 25 point drubbing by Tipperary 12 months ago.

For half of the current Galway U-21 panel, their reaction to that massacre could have gone either way. They could have let it get to them, they could have wallowed in the pain, but instead they focused all of their energies into the long road back to redemption which ended with the Cross of Cashel Cup in the Galway dressing-room on Saturday night.

They had 11 months to wait before they got a shot at redeeming themselves, against Limerick in last month’s semi-final, and few Galway people on the way to Thurles could have expected such a wonderful all-round team performance in the final.

And central to that renaissance, clearly, was the decision by team manager Anthony Cunningham to appoint two new selectors for his third year in charge. Neither Mattie Kenny nor Tom Helebert were involved in last year’s humiliating defeat in Tipperary’s own back yard and they clearly got the mood right in the training sessions since the 2011 panel regrouped in May.

Kenny and Helebert both had a ‘hands on’ role in training and the kind of swift tactical manoeuvring which saw the excellent Bernard Burke replace Tadhg Haran in the half-forward line, even though the Liam Mellows man had registered 1-3.

“We could ask for no more from this group of players,” said a delighted Helebert as the celebrations raged around the Galway dressing-room after the game. “I remember last year’s final well. I was down at the game here and you’d be horrified for the emotion of the players, because they had a very bad experience. But, when you look forward, you cannot let one game define your whole future. You have to put a defeat like that behind you.”

Perhaps the new voices at the sessions and new drills galvanised the players, but the team who went straight into the semi-final enjoyed a rare intensity in training this year. So much so that it was hard for the selectors to pick their starting XV. There were to be no sideshows or arguments over venues in 2011.

“Where I come from, at the end of the day, you turn up and you play. You compete. All we worked on in training all year long was getting fellas to be honest with themselves and to come to the table with work-rate, intensity, and honesty about the way they played. That was a feature of our training and any fella who wasn’t willing to contribute to that was found out,” said Helebert.

“What you have to build on is the mutual respect between the management and the players, and push on and work together for the common goal. We were very honest with the lads and they were very honest with us and we’ve ended up with the objective achieved. That’s what we are most proud about, that as a group of lads they worked to a man. Nobody let us down.”

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