General Lee leads his army on to battle with the Rebels
The common view of Galway hurling which has formed in recent years is of a county full of handy, skillful hurlers without heart, spine or leadership qualities.
Memories were already beginning to fade of the halcyon days of Hayes, Linnane, Finnerty, Keady, Malone, Cooney and Lynskey. However, there is growing evidence that things may be different this year. The physical aggression and hunting in packs which we saw against Kilkenny was apparent again in Ennis last Saturday night. What’s more, it was maintained from start to finish, and long after Clare were obviously a spent force.
Where Kilkenny had the physicality and attitude to stand up to the Galway onslaught, Clare died without a whimper. This was a major role reversal, as in recent years Clare had always relied on their ability to bully the Tribesmen around the place. John McIntyre has clearly placed the emphasis on adding a bit of steel to his team’s armoury, and the results so far look promising. He has also done the almost unthinkable and decided on a settled team, although Adrian Cullinane’s unfortunate injury will require some adjustment here. If you have forty players of roughly equal calibre, there is no point in the chopping and changing which has been standard fare for recent Galway managers. You just pick what you think is the best combination and stick with it, building up confidence and teamwork in the process.
In systemic terms, Clare’s biggest problem on Saturday night was their inability to win primary possession. At senior intercounty level you would expect defending teams to win about 60 per cent of the opposition puckouts. Galway did much better than that, mopping up over 70 per cent of the Clare puckouts. Where Clare were really in trouble was their inability to win Galway’s puckouts – over the hour the Tribesmen won no less than three quarters of their own puckouts, a phenomenal return at this level.
In personnel terms, another key factor in Galway’s win was John Lee’s performance. At the start of his reign, Ger Loughnane boldly announced that he would be building his team around Lee. Unfortunately for Ger, Lee never delivered the kind of display on his watch that we saw from him on Saturday night: twelve plays in each half for a quality points total of 55 in this column’s system where plays are rated on a scale of one to five. Unfortunately we are unable to give a play count for all the players in the game (there IS, after all, a day job) but to put this in perspective, the average quality points score for the outfield players who played the entire Munster final on Sunday was 29.
It was a bit rich to hear Mike McNamara after the game more or less blaming the lack of upcoming talent in Clare for this defeat. His was a team which could well have won last year’s Munster final and subsequently lost a high-quality All-Ireland quarter final to Cork, and just three weeks ago, only the goalkeeping heroics of Brendan Cummins denied them a Munster final place this year. As for the lack of upcoming talent, the under-21 team which was robbed of a Munster crown last year didn’t look too bad to me, and they are back in the Munster final again this year. Somewhat ironically, in its review of the Clare-Tipp game, this column suggested that “Clare are currently assembling what could prove to be a formidable team in the coming years”. There was little evidence of this last Saturday night. Notwithstanding Galway’s powerful performance, one suspects that all was not well within the Banner camp going in this game.
Wexford v Limerick Meanwhile, over in Wexford, Limerick managed to scrape over the line in a game which could have gone either way and in which the home side were ultimately denied by the width of a crossbar. It would be foolish to make any judgements on Limerick’s future prospects given the freakish conditions in which the game was played. However, a win of any kind can rekindle confidence, and with Laois unlikely to block the way, the Shannonsiders will be delighted with the prospect of facing Dublin rather than the pick of Galway/Cork/Waterford in the quarter final. Nonetheless, they still will have it all to do against a rapidly improving Dublin outfit which should have Ross O’Carroll back to full fitness and might even have Ronan Fallon among the substitutes – what a man to be able to bring on if things are going down to the wire in the closing minutes.
Waterford minors Finally, heartiest congratulations to the Waterford minors who captured just the county’s fourth Munster title at this level with a great display against red-hot favourites Tipperary on Sunday. Down by the Suir there had been major hype about last year’s team which failed to raise a gallop in their game against Cork in Walsh Park – a recurring problem for the county’s underage teams. This year’s team, by contrast, almost slipped into the final unnoticed and then produced a performance of extraordinary maturity, full of skill, commitment, organisation and fieldcraft. Waterford will surely mine two or three future seniors from this outfit, and with the word being that the upcoming pipeline is blessed with similar quality, coupled with their under-21 victory over Tipperary, it certainly looks as though the Déise will continue to be a major hurling force for the foreseeable future.
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