Keating controversy adds to Galway hurling’s woes

Inside Track with John McIntyre

Galway hurling is in a right mess after a year to forget on so many different levels. If you take Portumna’s All-Ireland club triumph last March out of the equation, there’s hardly been anything to celebrate in 2014. Passionate followers of the game locally are demoralised as the county stumbles from one crisis to another with little accountability in evidence.

On the field, it was the worst year for Galway teams in living memory. The seniors may have taken eventual All-Ireland champions Kilkenny to a replay, but there was a freakish element to their late exploits in the drawn Leinster semi-final. In the end, Galway didn’t even get to a quarter-final or Croke Park and, for the second season running, only managed to claim the championship scalps of minnows Laois.

At minor level, Galway were blown away by the quality and physique of a Limerick team which didn’t even win the All-Ireland title; the county U-21s lost their nerve down the home stretch against Wexford; while the Galway intermediates surrendered a big lead against Cork in Tullamore. No shortage of work went in to the preparations of these teams, but you now have the sense that Galway are lagging behind the big hurling powers in physical development and tactical appreciation.

Subsequently, there was the long drawn out process which led to the re-appointment of Anthony Cunningham as senior team manager. Despite publicly stating he wanted to stay in charge, the St. Thomas’ clubman was opposed by his former coach, the Galway U21 manager and a hero from the eighties. You’d either have expected that Cunningham would have got the message or that the Hurling Committee might have knocked some heads together, but basically it was left to every candidate for himself.

Former double All-Ireland winning captain Anthony Daly’s name was also floated, but the asking price for the Clare man’s involvement is assumed to have been too high, if negotiations even reached that stage. Ultimately, Cunningham held on only by the skin of his teeth, his continuing tenure reportedly relying on a casting vote.

Supporters have been disgruntled for years over the style in which Galway hurling is administered, with personal biases often believed to be surmounting what’s in the best interests of the sport locally. Reports of ongoing friction between the Hurling Committee and County Board officers is only adding to the sense of frustration and, the proof of the pudding, is the dwindling numbers of people following Galway teams.

Furthermore, the system in which the county hurling championship has been run over the past two years has been unwieldy and unbalanced. Six teams consigned to relegation with indecent haste before another one has even contested a game; and knock out matches played before the title race evolves into groups. The cart before the horse and all that! But now the protracted Matthew Keating affair has put the tin hat on it all.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.