Amid the mania, devotees of Galway hurling are mindful of the many fallow years
IT BEGINS with Joe. Everywhere you go you are confronted with his unmistakeable square gait, his aquiline features and the sharp eyes, the scarlet helmet. There he is, on the front page of all the local newspapers, on wall posters, on the cover of the tribute CD from Ger Fahy and Furry Village entitled Go Joe Go! on sale in the sports shop in Portumna.
No matter how it starts, their conversations always steers towards Joe Canning: all those John the Baptists tentatively proclaiming their saviour.
But it remains tentative. Of course there is the expected mania. Everywhere you go is bedecked in maroon flags and bunting. And they talk of Joe as if he is a god; those amazing flicks, the skill combined with the speed and strength of a rampaging rhinoceros when he has ball in hand.
But the mania is slightly controlled, more low-key than in the past. There are reasons for that. There have been too many false dawns in the 24 years since Conor Hayes last lifted the Liam Mac Carthy cup in 1988. There have been four lost All-Irelands; countless managers; hundreds of players who began and ended their careers without glory; and too many stumbles.
There is also the salient detail that tomorrow’s foe is formidable, the greatest team of any era, and one still smarting from the defeat in the Leinster final.
When you remark to the woman in Concannon’s shop in Killimor that it’s all a bit low-key, she replies: “No wonder. It’s a tough task to beat the Cats. But you never know. It would be a great thing for the county.”
A little caution. But it can’t suppress the desire, those uniquely GAA qualities of famine and hunger.
It’s telling that the most common slogan on banners is that of the Obama campaign in 1998: “Yes, we can.” I met nobody who did not believe Galway could win.
On a perfect, cloudless evening, the pretty village of Kiltormer in east Galway is a serene rural idyll. Tractors weave through fields gathering the autumn harvest. Swallows swoop and plane along the hedgerows. And kids saunter along the roads carrying their hurleys as naturally as they carry themselves.
Outside the GAA club, four people busy themselves putting up maroon-and-white bunting. “Welcome to the home of hurling,” says Peter Campbell, not wholly tongue-in-cheek. He is chairman of the club, and is helped by his wife Bernie, his son Killian and club player Ger Glynn.
“There’s a great pedigree. There are no other distractions here,” he says.
“There’s a great tradition of hurling going back to the foundation of the GAA. We have had great county players: Conor Hayes [the 1988 captain]; Tony and Ollie Kilkenny; Justin Campbell; Andy Fenton.”
Like others, Campbell is wary.
“If you go back to 2005, we beat Kilkenny in the semi-final. We all believed the hype that all we had to do was turn up on the day. There’s a bit more caution this time.”
They are not over-confident, he says, but they go in hope. “It’s been 24 years,” he says and pauses for a long time. “I am 45 now. Last time, I was 21. It was a lifetime ago. I hope to God we can win it this year, especially for the younger generation that have never seen it.”
People hark back to 1987, 1988 and the even more famous win of 1980, when Joe Connolly lifted the Liam Mac Carthy cup after 57 fallow years. On the day, Connolly, then only 23, delivered a magnificent, emotional speech in Irish and English: “It’s wonderful to be from Galway on a day like today. There are people back in Galway with wonder in their hearts, but also we must remember people in England, in America, and around the world and maybe they are crying at this moment.”
He handed the microphone to Joe McDonagh, who gave a soaring tenor rendition of The West’s Awake. If they weren’t crying already, they were then.
Connolly was our trainer in NUI Galway for the Fitzgibbon Cup in the late 1980s. I remember him showing us a video of that 1980 victory, and watched his eyes well up remembering the emotion of it all. This week, I rang him to see if he would speak about the 1980s and the unfulfilled promise since then. He politely but very firmly declined.
“I’m sick to my teeth of talking about 1980 and what’s happened since then. I just won’t do it any more.” It seems that the comparison with 1980 had been made too many times for him. In his way, Connolly was saying Galway hurling badly needs a new narrative.
Cathal Moore is one of those great Galway players who never won an All-Ireland. He played for Galway from 1996 to 2003. His father was a star player and all four sons have played with Turloughmore – his younger brother Fergal is the captain of the current team.
“I have a full set of medals but I would give them all up for the one All-Ireland that I don’t have. In hurling, that is the ultimate goal. You cannot buy one, as a trainer told me once. Look at all those players – the Joe Rabbittes, Ollie Cannings, Kevin Brodericks – who have played and ended their careers in the last 24 years without one.”
Moore says that Galway hurling was defined by its great skill and its speed. “There was a perception that Galway was soft and there was a soft underbelly. I do not agree with that.”
A little earlier, Ollie Canning had echoed many of those remarks. Joe’s older brother, a smart and magnificent corner back, played for the county for 15 years until 2010. Like Moore, he posits reasons why a county with such a strong pedigree underperformed when it mattered: too many managers discarded too soon; Galway entering the championship too late; not being physically big enough; and coming up against Cork and Kilkenny teams that were exceptional in any era.
The Cannings, like the Moores, are defined by hurling. Their father was a powerhouse hurler for Portumna. Their mother came from a well-known hurling family in Kiltormer. There are six brothers, all good hurlers. They have one sister, Deirdre. She is an All-Ireland camogie winner.
“My earliest memories are of going off on Sunday and watching games,” says Ollie. “It was a natural path for us. There were benefits from playing a team sport. We learned to deal with winning things and losing things.”
He is phlegmatic about not winning an All-Ireland. “It does not play on my mind. I was happy to hold on to the jersey when I had it. My attitude is that it was a privilege to play and I enjoyed playing and giving it 100 per cent. I do not look back with any regrets.”
It ends with Joe. Ollie tells you that his brother Ivan makes hurleys. You set off to buy one, drive deep into the countryside outside Portumna, along a minor road till you come to a neat detached house with a huge lawn and a workshop out the back. Three figures are hunched over work tables with their backs to you. You are taken aback to find that when one unfurls to his full height and faces you, it is Joe Canning himself, dressed in shorts and a T-shirt.
He brings you over and shows you the long row of 33-inch hurleys, tells you to try them out for weight and balance. You make small talk about the match. You pick the hurleys – they are beauties with a lovely square bás – and he signs them without quibble.
This is Thursday evening, three days before the All-Ireland final.
Tomorrow, for 80,000 in Croke Park and for hundreds of thousands around the world, there will be no star brighter in the heavens. But today standing outside the workshop, closing his eyes to feel the evening sun, you are struck by how ordinary and accessible and modest this guy is. That’s what makes hurling so great. It’s not about money or ego. It’s about greater qualities that defy the self-obsession of our age.