Na Cait v Gaillimh, AIF 9 Sept

[seafoid]

Should be handy enough to get tickets sorted for the hurling this year, and should be a quite a few on sale in Dublin on Sunday morning. The football will be impossible this year and i'm sure there has been quite a bit of swapping going on among the participating counties.

It should be easy get tickets if Galway bring their usual 500 supporters to the game.

I thought the final was on 2 weeks ago.

[Premier Emperor]

Should be handy enough to get tickets sorted for the hurling this year, and should be a quite a few on sale in Dublin on Sunday morning. The football will be impossible this year and i'm sure there has been quite a bit of swapping going on among the participating counties.

It should be easy get tickets if Galway bring their usual 500 supporters to the game.

I thought the final was on 2 weeks ago.

It was.

[Any craic]

See Ollie Canning's views here on video, interviewed in Portumna on Sunday evening - http://www.hoganstand.com/ArticleForm.aspx?ID=176818

[seafoid]

Should be handy enough to get tickets sorted for the hurling this year, and should be a quite a few on sale in Dublin on Sunday morning. The football will be impossible this year and i'm sure there has been quite a bit of swapping going on among the participating counties.

It should be easy get tickets if Galway bring their usual 500 supporters to the game.

I thought the final was on 2 weeks ago.

It was.

How did it go ?

[Premier Emperor]

Should be handy enough to get tickets sorted for the hurling this year, and should be a quite a few on sale in Dublin on Sunday morning. The football will be impossible this year and i'm sure there has been quite a bit of swapping going on among the participating counties.

It should be easy get tickets if Galway bring their usual 500 supporters to the game.

I thought the final was on 2 weeks ago.

It was.

How did it go ?

We eventually managed to nominate a team to go and beat Galway in the final.

[johnneycool]

Should be handy enough to get tickets sorted for the hurling this year, and should be a quite a few on sale in Dublin on Sunday morning. The football will be impossible this year and i'm sure there has been quite a bit of swapping going on among the participating counties.

It should be easy get tickets if Galway bring their usual 500 supporters to the game.

I thought the final was on 2 weeks ago.

It was.

How did it go ?

We eventually managed to nominate a team to go and beat Galway in the final.

nominate is hardly the correct word as Kilkenny weren't looking for any Tipp consent.

[GalwayBayBoy]

North and south unite to support Galway's drive for hurling success

TheScore.ie columnist and Galway native Ciaran Murphy on how his county's unique GAA dividing lines are becoming more blurred as their supporters awaits next Sunday's showdown in Croke Park.

THE RAILWAY LINE to Dublin goes straight across East Galway, through Oranmore, Athenry, Woodford and Ballinasloe, and acts as a pretty accurate dividing line between the respective strongholds of hurling and football in the county.

North of that line is football's heartland – Enda Colleran's Mountbellew, Killererin (Padraig Joyce country), Corofin and Kilconly, and my own home club of Milltown. South of that line lies Athenry, Portumna, Gort, Loughrea and 90% of the senior hurling clubs in the county.

It's almost as if Iarnrod Eireann had a part to play in it.  Certainly the division couldn't be any clearer – you were either north or south of it; one, or the other. In fact, until recently, there simply wasn't any such thing as a dual club in Galway.

Monivea-Abbeyknockmoy won county titles in the late 80s and early 90s in both hurling and football, and while there's no doubt what an extraordinary achievement that was, there was also little doubt that in both years, in both codes, it was a major shock.  The hurlers were so surprised they won that championship in 1988 that they promptly lost the Connacht final (traditionally a turkey-shoot and held, as befits a turkey-shoot, around Christmas time) to Four Roads of Roscommon.

In fact the only up-close, in the flesh experience we ever got of the great Galway hurling team of the late 80s in Milltown came courtesy of the Monivea-Abbey Junior B football team, because they sometimes had in their midst Michael Coleman, the chain-smoking, non-timber-sparing midfielder that typified the sort of gruff appeal which made that Galway team one of the more memorable of recent times.

In later years, I got to play against them, and it was always pretty easy to spot the dual players – their hair was cut a little more closely, their tackles were a little more robust, their teeth were a little more... absent. The thought occurred to us that they were dangerous enough on the football field, without then providing them with a lethal weapon for the hurling.

And those no-nonsense characters I encountered in the Monivea full-back line were pretty much playing up to the stereotype we had in our heads of the hurlers. Galway football folk saw ourselves as 'guardians of the flame' – when we were good, we were very good, and the neutrals loved us. We had ideas about how the game should be played; we were artists; we had class.

The hurlers had no such pretensions.  They had taken enough beatings over the years to ensure they weren't fussy how the wins were coming, once they were coming.  And when 1980 came around, it was tough, uncomplicated men like Bernie Forde, PJ Molloy and Noel Lane who helped make the breakthrough.  And after that came Brendan Lynskey, Sylvie Linnane and Peter Finnerty. A conveyor belt of hard men had been created and Galway reaped the benefits.

Three All-Irelands in eight years set the template for Galway hurling. We produced plenty of artists in those days too of course – the Connolly's, the peerless Joe Cooney, Eanna Ryan and the current manager Anthony Cunningham.  But to be successful, Galway had to have steel.

Given the type of hurler he was, it's interesting to see the premium Anthony Cunningham has put on physicality.  In the Leinster final, Galway shocked us all with their intensity. I remember even the following morning playing and replaying the moment in the first quarter when Johnny Coen ran through and over Richie Power. I was poring over it like it was the Zapruder film, because we haven't seen a Galway team do that in years.

The dividing lines between football and hurling are becoming more and more blurred now. The hurlers still train in Athenry but the only representative that club had in county colours this year was Tomas Flynn, half-forward for the footballers. And Cunningham's managerial style maybe speaks in some way to sporting ecumenism, given his prior experience as a football manager outside the county with St Brigid's and Garrycastle.

There was something unmistakably (distastefully even, to some of the more delicate flowers in the hurling aristocracy) football-esque about some of Galway's play in the All-Ireland semi-final against Cork – withdrawn wing-forwards, packed defences, isolated full-forward lines.

On the ground, Flynn aside, the divide is still there.  We've grown used to sending our second teams down to play the traditional hurling clubs as they dip their toe in the football, but those hurling clubs are starting to take it more and more seriously. Hurling remains a vast, unopened book for us big-ball merchants based around Tuam.

A story from my own club illustrates a point when my late neighbour Johnny Connolly once tried to start a hurling club in Milltown, in the 1960′s. He counted among his most devoted disciples a young Jim Carney (the first ever host of the Sunday Game), but, so far from other hurling clubs, the game flowered, flourished briefly, then died.   My father was born in Waterford, and so we had hurleys in our house growing up, but we might have been the only ones, even in the heyday of Galway's success in the late 80′s.

You could say the railway line has done us a favour – its neat division of East Galway has allowed us to be competitive at one code or the other in every decade since the 1920s.  And perhaps it's too dramatic to call it a dividing line. Maybe it's more like the household fence you chat to your neighbour over.

After all, come Sunday, fans from north and south will head along that line for Croke Park, and an All-Ireland final appearance we can all celebrate.

[emmetryan]

I've put together a preview of the Hurling 7s taking place on the eve of the final for anyone interested http://action81.com/blog/?p=6187

[Milltown Row2]

Cracking tournament and great days craic after you are put out

[seafoid]

I can't wait for this match. It's going to be timber.

The Galway management are on a different level to last year and they know they have the talent at hand and on the other side Kilkenny got whupped in Leinster and will be gagging for revenge but have a lot of miles on the clock and 2 knockout matches lost in 3 seasons.


This was in the indo last year before before Galway lost to dublin


Vincent Hogan: Have Galway become a soft touch?
Vincent Hogan tries to solve one of hurling's great mysteries with the help of three legends from the West – Brendan Lynskey, Conor Hayes and Noel Lane
By Vincent Hogan
Saturday June 18 2011
"Manliness was a central part of that squad. There were no whingers or cry babies."
Cyril Farrell on the Galway team of the 80s in his autobiography, 'The Right to Win'.
Brendan Lynskey pauses, as if to gather his words into more orderly bundles. He is angry. Not irritable or uneasy, but stridently, palpably angry.
"I'm trying to say this without blowing a head gasket," he sighs. "But there's a problem here in Galway..."
Conor Hayes is on first-name terms with Lynskey's "problem." Having guided the county to their last All-Ireland final appearance in 2005, he stepped down one year later, exasperated.
He talks now of a "culture of excuses" in Galway hurling. "People will be down my throat now when they read this," says the last man to carry the Liam MacCarthy Cup west.
"I don't care, let them talk away. I've seen it at close quarters."
Noel Lane's frustration is asterisked by an innate reluctance to be seen as opportunistic or unfair. "I hate ever questioning players," says the manager of the 2001 defeated All-Ireland finalists.
"But you have to ask do they not have the mental toughness or physical ruthlessness, that savage will to win? And there's only one way for them to answer that question."
NOBODY KNOWS QUITE what awaits Galway tonight in Tullamore. Nobody ever knows. Twenty-three years after their last senior All-Ireland win, Galway are still -- habitually -- touted as serious contenders for the MacCarthy Cup.
Why? Maybe because they've won two of the last six All-Ireland U-21 crowns and three of the last seven at minor grade. Maybe because Galway's champions have won four of the last six All-Ireland club titles.
The raw material is, apparently, there.
Yet, since Galway's swashbuckling defeat of Kilkenny in the '05 semi-final, they have not even progressed beyond the All-Ireland quarter-final stage.
Worse, their record of wins in properly competitive championship fixtures during that period reads an abysmal -- played 14, won 4.
Those four wins, it should be said, were all claimed under the current management. Galway's only victories of '06 were against Laois (7-18 to 2-13) and Westmeath (3-21 to 0-6), while Ger Loughnane's two years in charge also decanted only victories against Laois (two) and Antrim.
You can detect, then, more than the usual amount of electricity fizzing around tonight's engagement with league champions Dublin.
There may be nothing more tiresome to the modern player than old soldiers carping about lost glory.
Yet, the uniformity of opinion from three members of the last Galway team to win a senior All-Ireland can't be blithely disregarded either.
All three are unequivocal in a belief that defeat tonight will, essentially, terminate another championship season for Galway. For they see the qualifiers as a death march to oblivion.
So, tonight is freighted with uncommon tension.
You ask Lynskey is he pessimistic? "Very," he says bluntly.
Having served as a selector during Loughnane's first season as Galway manager, the teak-tough former All Star centre-forward believes the county inculcates too many bad habits in its young players.
"Galway win an All-Ireland minor and, all of a sudden, these lads' heads become as big as buckets," says Lynskey. "They're on Galway Bay FM, they're down in Supermacs, they're opening up this, opening up that, signing jerseys. There's too much made of them.
"We're making superstars out of middling hurlers in Galway, blowing up bad hurlers as good.
"And they end up putting on the jersey as if they're entitled to it. They're not entitled to it.
"In fact, my honest opinion is that three or four of the lads on the current senior team are not entitled to be wearing a maroon and white jersey at all."
Hayes looked to have ignited something remarkable six years ago when Galway fired a scarcely believable 5-18 past Kilkenny in one of the most spectacular championship games ever seen. But they were relatively subdued in the subsequent final against Cork and haven't been anywhere close to that precinct since.
For the captain of the winning teams of '87 and '88, the slow unraveling of focus was difficult to stomach.
"What we built up in '05, just all drifted away again," says Hayes. "They couldn't be spoken to. They knew it all, had everything sussed. They were the next Kilkenny. The next Cork. The attitude was, 'Yeah, this is it. We've made it!'
"As if winning an All-Ireland was inevitable.
"One of the issues I had with Galway was: I found them to be very much a bunch of individuals. And, when you're losing, the individual goes to mind himself and nobody else.
"When you got them all going together, they were capable of brilliance.
"But I found it difficult to instil a team ethic into them. I'll be shot for saying this, but some of these lads' biggest worry with 10 minutes to go seemed to be whose jersey they'd bring home.
"I know it'll be fired back at me that I'm talking s***e, only trying to cover up the fact that I didn't get it out of them myself.
"But that's what I found. When backs are to the wall, they don't come out fighting. They remain against the wall. They capitulate too easily."
Like Lynskey, Hayes believes that far more is made of minor victories in Galway than is perhaps healthy.
The arithmetic, he says, casts doubt on the value of minor All-Irelands to future senior teams.
"I find myself wondering how high is the standard of minor hurling," says Hayes. "And I don't mean that as any disrespect to Mattie Murphy, who has a great system in place here.
"But you hear fellas picking teams in Galway now with Joe Canning at full-forward and some lad who's maybe 16 in the corner beside him. That'd be a great team, wouldn't it?
"You say to them 'But he's only 16!'
"And you get, 'Ah yeah, but when he comes through...'
"Senior hurling is a completely different game to minor hurling.
"But clubs and families are making living gods out of young players in Galway. Next thing, they're picked to play with the seniors and they don't know what's hit them.
"John Gardiner or JJ Delaney isn't going to shake hands with you and say 'Jaysus, you're the famous Galway minor!'
"So, 20 minutes into the game, the young fella is wondering, 'Why isn't this happening for me?'"
Lane expresses a high regard for the current senior management team. Indeed, he suggests that a reflex of culling managers after each big-day disappointment has served Galway poorly since '88.
If the team fails to perform now, he doesn't doubt that there will be "a strong heave" against John McIntyre.
"Do that and the whole thing starts again," he says.
"The players want continuity, but we've a funny set-up here where you get a couple of years to win an All-Ireland.
"There's nothing in terms of a long-term strategy.
"County boards, hurling boards and supporters can have very low patience thresholds and I think the huge turnover of managers has had a negative impact on Galway hurling.
"If they go that way again this year, you'll have young fellas like Joe Canning wondering what the hell is going on."
But what is the strength of McIntyre's hand now?
THE TEAM'S NATIONAL LEAGUE campaign petered out limply after a Pearse Stadium thrashing by Tipperary that Lane recalls as "unforgiveable."
Yet, Hayes identifies last year's Leinster final against Kilkenny as the day that annoyed him most.
"In my opinion, they literally walked away from that game," he says. "Apart from Damien Hayes, I felt they didn't put up any kind of a fight at all.
"Looking at them, I don't think they tried that day. And there's nothing worse than not trying."
Lynskey delves into a specific that, endlessly, fuels his ire now. He sees this Galway team as catastrophically weak in the air. Worse, he suspects that weakness to be born of physical fear.
"Loughnane tried to change this, to his credit," says Lynskey. "He brought in a machine to try and get fellas catching the ball. But it didn't work because I firmly believe it's too late if they haven't been doing it at minor level.
"Our players have got to start winning puck-outs, not bat them. Why are we afraid to put up our hand to catch the ball? Like, what is wrong with these guys?
"If you're an inter-county hurler, you're an inter-county hurler.
"God almighty, fine, you might get a few broken nails or broken fingers. We got them and played on with them. Are we taking the easy options now? I'm trying to be as mild as I can, but I just cry with vexation at what's happening in Galway hurling.
"Our players are a little bit on the shy side. Afraid to put up their hands or a little bit cowardly. Are we prepared to win the hard ball? We're not. We are just not winning primary possession.
"All we're doing is batting the ball out to midfield, where we're probably getting bet anyway.
"All the top managers in the country know what we're going to do. Their midfield just has to sit deep and, the minute we bat the ball, it's 'thank you very much...'
"GET YOUR HANDS ON THE BALL! Print that please. If you're refusing to put your hand up even to win your own puck-outs, then my God almighty how are you going to win games? You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure that out."
Galway's team selection this week suggests that McIntyre is aware of this as a pressing issue.
There is little enough criticism of his management skills from any of the 80s team, albeit Lynskey is inclined to question whether or not he knows his "best 15."
In spite of the laboured quarter-final defeat of Westmeath recently, there is widespread acknowledgement too that Galway's presence in Leinster has been a positive.
"The system is much fairer," says Hayes. "Beat Dublin now and they can kick on. Actually, I think they have a real chance of winning a Leinster title here. But that's the thing, they have to kick on."
IF THIS IS ABOUT A GENERATIONAL divide, at least Lane, Hayes and Lynskey have more than their medals to defend them now. All have tried to return Galway to the hurling summit and, if each fell short to different degrees, they can't -- at least -- be accused of sermonising from ivory towers.
For all three, patience has simply been worn down to a thread.
Maybe Lynskey expresses it most candidly.
"The time for talking is over now," he says. "As Johnny Cash sang, it's time to 'Walk the line!' And you can print that. This is it now.
"No more telling us what we want to hear, sending out the right vibes, lawdee, dawdee, daw.
"You see, there's a perception, wrongly, here in Galway that if we'd beaten Tipperary last year, we'd have won the All-Ireland. Well I can guarantee you we would not. Kilkenny would have blown us off the field.
"So, it's about the players now. No more excuses, no more nothing. Make it personal. Show the county some respect and go and do it."
Hayes, too, believes that that narrow loss to Tipp last July merely spun an illusion.
"People have been singing their praises for that," he says. "But, if Galway had played Tipp in the All-Ireland final at that level, they'd have been beaten by 13 or 14 points.
"I don't think Galway have any excuses anymore. And, while I don't want to be raising Dublin's hackles, to lose this game now would be to lose at a level that should be below Galway's. I know they are worrying about this game.
"But, without being arrogant, Galway should be able to beat Dublin."
Lane suspects that defeat tonight could have "a seriously adverse effect on Galway hurling." He says: "I think we're on very thin ice here. There's an awful lot of doubt around.
"Galway have so much success at minor, U-21 and club level, the public are kind of wondering what the hell is going on.
"This team is at a crossroads and I think pride has to come into the equation. If people are questioning their ruthlessness, well there's only one way to answer that.
"I see this as a milestone for Galway hurling. It's a very critical game."
More on the line than the bourgeosie scalp of new champions.
- Vincent Hogan
Irish Independent
 

[johnneycool]

Kilkenny are seriously going to put this up to Galway in the physical exchanges, Galway will need to respond in a disciplined manner as Kilkenny have mastered the fine line of what you can get away with and what you can't irrrespective of what the rule book says.

There's an artform to the several small fouls enough to impede an opponent, but leave the referee in a quandry about blowing his whistle, whereas one big foul will almost certainly draw a whistle and card!

Kelly will be aware of the goings on in the semi-final and won't want a repeat but his patience will be tested early on.

Roll on sunday.

[Asal Mor]

That was a great interview with Lynskey, Hayes and Lane and it was good to read it again. They were proven right in pretty much everything they said too. We went down without a fight to Waterford and Dublin last year. And we got cleaned out in the air as the 3 boys predicted we would. Niall Burke and Niall O Donoghue have been huge additions on that score, both are excellent in the air and Johnathon Glynn on the subs too. I think he'll have a big role on Sunday.

[mouview]

North and south unite to support Galway's drive for hurling success


You could say the railway line has done us a favour – its neat division of East Galway has allowed us to be competitive at one code or the other in every decade since the 1920s.  And perhaps it's too dramatic to call it a dividing line. Maybe it's more like the household fence you chat to your neighbour over.

After all, come Sunday, fans from north and south will head along that line for Croke Park, and an All-Ireland final appearance we can all celebrate.

etc.

Not absolutely correct. Athenry is on the railway line; Turloughmore and Pearses are both North of it. A more exact geographical dividing line would be the N17 from Galway out to Loughgeorge, branch off on the N63, on out through Turlough', Abbey, Moylough, Mountbellew, Caltra, Agascragh and on to Ballinasloe.

Abbeyknockmoy is probably the most 'split' parish; if you were from Abbey, you went to school in Tuam and played football. If you were in Monivea, you went to Athenry and hurled. Of course, citizens claim dual nationality and can speak with authority on both codes.

Mike Coleman will be on the pitch on Sunday in a suit. I wish he was wearing a jersey . You could put the place on Galway if he was.

[seafoid]

North and south unite to support Galway's drive for hurling success


You could say the railway line has done us a favour – its neat division of East Galway has allowed us to be competitive at one code or the other in every decade since the 1920s.  And perhaps it's too dramatic to call it a dividing line. Maybe it's more like the household fence you chat to your neighbour over.

After all, come Sunday, fans from north and south will head along that line for Croke Park, and an All-Ireland final appearance we can all celebrate.

etc.

Not absolutely correct. Athenry is on the railway line; Turloughmore and Pearses are both North of it. A more exact geographical dividing line would be the N17 from Galway out to Loughgeorge, branch off on the N63, on out through Turlough', Abbey, Moylough, Mountbellew, Caltra, Agascragh and on to Ballinasloe.

Abbeyknockmoy is probably the most 'split' parish; if you were from Abbey, you went to school in Tuam and played football. If you were in Monivea, you went to Athenry and hurled. Of course, citizens claim dual nationality and can speak with authority on both codes.

Mike Coleman will be on the pitch on Sunday in a suit. I wish he was wearing a jersey . You could put the place on Galway if he was.

and Sylane ...
plus Tomas Mannion went to school in Athenry and played football for the county ....

And what is wrong with Ballinasloe? Such a big town and nothing happening GAA wise really since the Brennans

[johnneycool]

North and south unite to support Galway's drive for hurling success


You could say the railway line has done us a favour – its neat division of East Galway has allowed us to be competitive at one code or the other in every decade since the 1920s.  And perhaps it's too dramatic to call it a dividing line. Maybe it's more like the household fence you chat to your neighbour over.

After all, come Sunday, fans from north and south will head along that line for Croke Park, and an All-Ireland final appearance we can all celebrate.

etc.

Not absolutely correct. Athenry is on the railway line; Turloughmore and Pearses are both North of it. A more exact geographical dividing line would be the N17 from Galway out to Loughgeorge, branch off on the N63, on out through Turlough', Abbey, Moylough, Mountbellew, Caltra, Agascragh and on to Ballinasloe.

Abbeyknockmoy is probably the most 'split' parish; if you were from Abbey, you went to school in Tuam and played football. If you were in Monivea, you went to Athenry and hurled. Of course, citizens claim dual nationality and can speak with authority on both codes.

Mike Coleman will be on the pitch on Sunday in a suit. I wish he was wearing a jersey . You could put the place on Galway if he was.

Big fan of Colemans back in the day as well, not to be messed with, but it always seemed that injuries hampered him.