Sammon builds team

Date Published: 04-Oct-2007

NEW Galway football manager Liam Sammon looks set to go with three selectors for the coming season following weeks of behind the scenes talks.

Sammon — who will train the team himself — has lined up the services of Killanin’s Richie Fahey, Dunmore MacHales’ Tom Ryder and Jimmy O’Dea of Tuam Stars to complete his backroom team.

There had been speculation of a fourth selector also featuring — with Padraic Conroy’s name being suggested — but it now seems certain that the ‘sideline team’ will be confined to the manager and three selectors.

Richie Fahey, a resolute inter-county defender for a number of years until injury curtailed his career, will be the youngest of the Galway backroom team. Tom Ryder, a former Dunmore MacHales full back, has been involved with his own club team on the sideline and was also a Galway minor selector with Ned Burns and for the first year of Alan Mulholland’s reign.

Jimmy O’Dea is from one of Tuam’s most famous footballing families — along with brothers Padraic and Conor— he wore the maroon jersey for a time in the late 1980s during the reign of Billy Joyce.

Sammon’s backroom team will have to be ratified before a delegate meeting of the Football Board — likely to be held in the middle of this month — but that should be just a rubber stamp procedure.

Sammon’s ‘trade’ in the game is in coaching and training so it’s no surprise that he will take up that role himself although he had indicated that he will expect a ‘hands on’ approach from his selectors with this task. The new manager is expected to have a provisional panel in place by the end of October or early November for a pre- Christmas training programme following the completion of the club championship on October 28.