Watching Pádraic Joyce celebrate on Sunday, you could see that this was so much more than a Connacht final. Where are Galway and Mayo today in terms of the All-Ireland? In exactly the same place as each other. Who feels better about it? Not Kevin McStay, that’s for sure.
The fact that Joyce let loose when it was over made it very obvious that this has been a rough few months. All through the winter, he’s had to convince his players that they’re well able for the best teams in the country. Even though the league was going badly and the injuries were piling up, he had to convince them that when the time came to make a statement they would be ready and able to do it.
It’s hard to sell bad porter. Intercounty players aren’t fools and they don’t swallow just anything. That goes double for an intercounty dressingroom that has been to an All-Ireland final inside the last couple of seasons. There’s no codding players once they’ve seen what it takes to get to the biggest game of the year. They know how much has to go right. More to the point, they know how little margin for error there is.
[ Connor Gleeson’s late free wins Galway third Connacht title in a rowOpens in new window ]
So when the Galway players were slogging away through the league and they had no Damien Comer and no Shane Walsh and they were missing Seán Kelly and Liam Silke and Cillian McDaid and all the rest of them, Joyce would have had a serious job on his hands getting the heads right in that dressingroom and making them believe. No matter how much they trusted him, they had no evidence that he was right.
Until now. Galway can always beat Mayo and Mayo can always beat Galway, so a result either way was never going to be a big surprise. But when you get down to brass tacks, this was a game that was in the melting pot against a top-six team and Galway pulled it out of the fire. That’s why Joyce and his team erupted. He has his panel right where he needs it now.
Getting Kelly back is arguably the biggest boost of all. He’s not at top speed yet but his work rate and intelligence are there to be seen. He must also be thrilled to have Comer back in this sort of form. You’re looking at a fella that has no football played except about 20 minutes against Sligo and yet he’s that mentally strong to take over a Connacht final and bring everything to it. He’s a battering ram, an unselfish team player and a skilful scoring forward all at once.
The two points he scored showed how hard he is to defend against. He has a unique kicking technique that makes him very hard to block down. Watch him the next day – when he kicks for a point, he does it almost falling away back towards his own goal. That buys him those extra milliseconds so the ball gets very low to the ground before he connects with it, meaning the defender can’t get close enough to get a hand in to block.
[ Galway’s form has nosedived in the absence of Shane Walsh and Damien ComerOpens in new window ]
If Comer is fit and firing, that’s one question answered for Galway. The other one is how to get Shane Walsh to be what we all know he can be. Again, I think Joyce has been very smart here. Walsh came on just before half-time and played a very disciplined game on Sunday. He mostly left the frees to Rob Finnerty and Connor Gleeson and just fulfilled his role to the letter.
My feeling with Walsh is that you have to cut away all the briars and let him focus on doing one job. I’ve watched him at times kicking frees off his left leg and wondered why it was being indulged. I know he’s able to do it with his left as well as some predominantly left-footed players can. But that doesn’t mean he should.
Why give yourself that added mental pressure? That would be my attitude. Finnerty showed on Sunday what a fine left-footed kicker he is and since it comes naturally to him, there’s no added thinking involved. I don’t care how two-footed Walsh is, everybody has a foot that they favour over the other when the squeeze comes on.
Matt Connor was one of the most beautifully two-footed players you’ll ever see. I was talking to him one time and asked him how often he kicked with his left leg to get it as good as it was. “Only when I have to,” he said.
I’ve often looked at Shane Walsh and wondered why he would be doing things he doesn’t have to. Why not just pick the things he is best at and cut out the bullshit? For someone as talented as he is, my guess is that the best scenario is to define a role and tell him to go and be the best player in the country at it. He’s well capable, we all know that.
As for Mayo, it’s obvious now that Kevin McStay is in the doghouse with the supporters. You can see why – they were two points up in injury-time and lost. You can’t let that happen. When the heat came on in those critical minutes, the Mayo kick-out got demolished by Galway, just as the Dubs did to them last year. They were supposed to fix that over the winter.
So it’s a bit like the flipside of how people are seeing Joyce. Mayo are going into the All-Ireland series and their supporters are being asked to trust the management will have this sorted for the next time they’re in a close game. Their starting full-forward line only scored three points from play all day. They need to fix that too. And time is getting tight.
McStay’s predicament reminds me a bit of a Sopranos episode when Richie Aprille is struggling to drum up support for a mutiny against Tony. He goes to Uncle Junior and gets no joy there either. When he leaves, Junior sums up the situation.
“He couldn’t f**kin’ sell it.”
In reality, Mayo are no worse off today than they were before the weekend. But it doesn’t feel that way – and it won’t until they pull out a big win in tight circumstances against another top-five team. That’s the kind of thing McStay will be able to sell. People stop nitpicking fairly quickly once you’ve found a way not to lose a big one.
All isn’t lost. As Galway showed on Sunday, one big win can change a lot of minds.
