McGuinness’ session with Galway may lead to more

GALWAY senior football boss Padraic Joyce has not ruled out former All-Ireland winning Donegal manager and ex-Celtic soccer coach, Jim McGuinness, playing a further role in the Tribesmen’s set-up in 2020.

McGuinness, who was part of the Donegal squad that won the 1992 All-Ireland, took Galway’s training in Tuam Stadium last Sunday and, as is so often the case in this social media age, footage and images of the session emerged shortly afterwards on Twitter.

The involvement of a high-profile figure such as McGuinness has generated much interest locally and nationally but, when asked at Monday’s press conference in Loughgeorge if McGuinness would be part of the Galway management set-up going forward, Joyce was non-committal.

“We’ll see,” said Joyce. “Look it, it’s like when you sample a new brand of something, you taste it and see what it’s like. If you don’t like it you might go somewhere else and get something different. We’ll see how it goes down.”

Although Joyce, a former Sigerson Cup team-mate of McGuinness at Tralee IT, “loved” what McGuinness brought to the training ground, the Killererin man said that he would wait for the feedback from the players before making any decision.

“The session only took place yesterday at 2 o’clock (on Sunday), it was over at 4. We need to do an analysis of the session and a feedback from the players and see what way it’s working.

“Again, Jim is a personal friend of mine and has been for years. I went to college with the man. I’d have huge respect for him, his CV speaks for itself. He is a qualified professional performance coach and I felt that we needed (to look at) the mental aspect to the game, to kind of get a bit of an extra boost into the players.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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