Morale is low but hurlers may not be a busted flush

Inside Track with John McIntyre

IT’S a chilling statistic in some ways . . . of the last 16 All-Ireland senior hurling titles, all bar one were won by three counties. Hurling’s traditional hierarchy of Kilkenny, Cork and Tipperary have reasserted their dominance after the sport’s revolution in the mid to late Nineties with only Clare’s talented crop of young players breaking this stranglehold in 2013.

In reality, however, even Cork and Tipperary have only been bit-players in the farming out of the Liam McCarthy Cup during this period such has been Kilkenny’s unprecedented superiority in the championship. Ten All-Ireland titles in 16 years under Brian Cody is astonishing and only Lar Corbett’s three-goal blitz in the 2010 final denied the Cats a record-breaking fifth consecutive September triumph.

Sadly, Galway haven’t really measured up over the past two decades. True, there were All-Ireland final appearances in 2001, ’05 and ’12, but the county remains woefully inconsistent and the past two years have been basically a washout with the Tribesmen’s lone championship victories – and both were unexpectedly hard earned – coming against minnows Laois.

That level of form after Galway’s blitzing of Kilkenny in the 2012 Leinster final and coming so close to toppling the Noresiders in that year’s drawn All-Ireland decider is both disappointing and frustrating. The assumption was that they would drive on over the following seasons but, instead, the men in maroon have fallen into a big hole leaving morale around the county arguably at a modern-day low.

That scenario is not just down to the sub-standard displays on the field over the past two summers. Supporters have also become disenfranchised by the unwieldy system in which the county championship is run, while the staging of last year’s final between Gort and Portumna just 13 days before Christmas has also fuelled discontent among the Galway grassroots. The reported disconnect between the County Board and the Hurling Committee only adds to the sense of local unease.

The process which ultimately led to the re-appointment of Anthony Cunningham as team boss was unsatisfactory too. I can’t imagine any other county tolerating a scenario where an outgoing manager, having expressed a desire to stay in the role, would be opposed by his former coach (Mattie Kenny) and the current county U-21 supremo (Johnny Kelly). It reflects an absence of joined-up thinking and smacks of the ‘every man for himself ’ syndrome.

I am already on record as saying that Cunningham was entitled to one last shot on the Galway sideline. Remember, he had two new selectors last year in Eugene Cloonan and Damien Curley who had no experience of that environment previously and they are both bound to be more influential in 2015. Furthermore, the addition of eighties midfielder Pat Malone to the set up is a positive move as well.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.