Statistics provide no comfort for St. ThomasÕ men

Date Published: 06-Feb-2013

TRADITION is stacked against Galway hurling champions striving to add All-Ireland club honours in their debut season at this level. In fact, it’s never been done as a host of prominent teams from the county fell by the wayside in their initial attempts to bring the Tommy Moore Cup back west. Kiltormer and Abbeyknockmoy, for instance, didn’t even get out of the province.

The casualty list of Galway clubs stretches from Liam Mellows in 1970 to Gort in 2012, with the likes of Castlegar, Ardrahan, Sarsfields, Turloughmore, Killimordaly, Athenry, Portumna, Clarinbridge and Loughrea all failing to go the whole way in their first experience of the All-Ireland club championship. That damning statistic alone will have given St. Thomas’, the latest Galway team to set off on the road to Croke Park in March, much to ruminate over.

Furthermore, facing reigning champions Loughgiel Shamrocks in Parnell Park on Saturday is something of a double edged sword for David Burke and company. On one hand, the battle-hardened Ulster men’s pedigree at this level – they beat Na Piarsaigh of Limerick and Coolderry of Offaly last spring – is well proven but, mentally, the Galway title holders will still find it difficult to avoid falling into trap of viewing their opposition as being ‘only an Antrim team.’ Portumna, who went on to become the best of them all at their prime, fell to Dunloy in February of 2004.

Even the bookmakers are marginally on the side of Loughgiel for this weekend’s semi-final and when you factor in that St. Thomas’ are complete novices to championship hurling in February, it’s probably hard to blame them. The Antrim club have banked a lot of experience over the years and in star attacker Liam Watson, they have a player who is often inspirational when the team’s need is greatest. He scored 16 points in their extra time semi-final victory over Na Piarsaigh 12 months ago and accounted for another whopping tally of 3-7 in their 4-13 to 0-17 win over Coolderry in the decider last March.

Watson, reportedly, isn’t in quite that same kind of mesmeric form this time round, but Loughgiel also have other notable forwards in Brendan McGarry and Eddie McCloskey and, overall, they are a tough, well prepared and battle-hardened squad which, one imagines, would be better suited to the relative tight confines of Parnell Park than their Galway opposition. Their last competitive outing saw them complete a hat-trick of Ulster titles when they dismissed the challenge of Down’s Portaferry on a 2-25 to 0-12 scoreline.

Contrast all that to a St. Thomas’ team who are now entering completely new territory and are probably entitled to be still feeling a little giddy after their momentous Galway championship triumph last November. The club mightn’t have thought it at the time but the fact that they subsequently lost the county U-21 final, despite being backboned by a large number of the senior side, would have served as a timely reality check more than any words of caution team manager John Burke could muster.

Readers have probably assumed, by this stage, that I am writing off the chances of St. Thomas’ continuing their historic adventure, but that is not the case at all. I believe they have a great opportunity of reaching the All-Ireland final but it is important to frame the arguments in relation to the challenge that awaits them and to look at the unsuccessful record of other first-time Galway champions in the All-Ireland arena.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.