Joe Canning: The only time we tried to pull a fast one over Kilkenny, Ed Sheeran was to blame

The only time we tried to pull a fast one over Kilkenny, Ed Sheeran was to blame. It was 2018, the first year of the round-robin and the first year we were allowed to host Leinster Championship matches in Pearse Stadium. Until that point, a condition of us playing in Leinster was that all the matches had to actually physically be played in Leinster. But once the round-robin came in, we got to have proper home matches.

Just one problem. Ed Sheeran was playing Salthill in the middle of May and Kilkenny were coming to town a fortnight later. As everybody saw with Páirc Uí Chaoimh this year, that’s not enough time for the pitch to repair itself for a championship match. But that game was happening, come what may. It was going to be close to a sell-out crowd, we had waited for years to get a home match. There was no chance of it being moved.

On the Friday night before the game, all you could see was a big bare patch on the grass over in the corner by the terrace side of the ground. There was nearly no grass most of the way up that terrace sideline and definitely none up as far as halfway. This wasn’t going to look good on TV, that’s for sure.

So they actually painted the grass. Out with the green paint and gave it a good going over to make it look better. We only found out ourselves the week of the game because we were told at the last minute that we couldn’t train on it. The bulk of the paint was needed for the corner of the ground where we traditionally would have done our warm-up so on the day, we warmed up in front of the stand.

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In the end, it looked fine on TV because it had been painted. You could see that it wasn’t perfect but it looked a lot better to the viewers at home than it was in person. Before the game, we made sure to emphasise that if at all possible, we weren’t to hit the ball down to that corner.

We wanted to play the majority of ball down to the other corner under the stand, which would have been unusual because that’s the corner in Salthill where a lot of the wind swirls in. But it was still better than being over on the other side. And naturally enough, we let Kilkenny find this all out for themselves.

I was a year into my senior career when Galway joined the Leinster Championship. We knew at the time that there was a bit of pushback from some of the Leinster counties, even though it had been suggested for a while and everyone could see it was probably going to happen at some stage. But you’d always hear that attitude — “We already have to beat Kilkenny, why would we want Galway in the mix as well?”

We weren’t bothered by any of that. In all honesty, the Leinster Championship didn’t mean an awful lot to me. It wasn’t as if we were gunning to get in there so that we could have a chance to win a trophy. That wasn’t what it was about. No, the big draw in getting into Leinster was the chance to play competitive games in the championship, but especially against Kilkenny.

That was what I wanted more than anything. They were after winning the 2008 All-Ireland and everybody was calling them the greatest team of all time. I wanted to be in there playing them as much as possible. I wanted to find out what the benchmark was and to get a handle on how close — or how far away — we were in comparison to them. The chance to play them nearly every year? Sign me up.

It was genuinely one of the things that got me excited at the start of every year. When are we playing Kilkenny? At what stage do we meet them? Where will it be? If it’s a semi-final, it’ll be Tullamore. If it’s a final, it’ll be Croke Park. Have to be right that day.

I loved playing against Kilkenny. Part of it was just the fact of being a sportsperson. You always want to play against the best. Trying to see could I perform against them was a huge motivation. It made charting your progress very simple — if you were able to play against Kilkenny, you were obviously doing something right.

I always got the feeling they liked playing against us too. It was 15 v 15, man-on-man, no sweepers. It was all about winning your own personal battle and whichever team won most of the personal battles on the day generally won the game. It was physical as well, which they always embraced.

We embraced it too, which might have been a small bit unexpected. It’s fair to say that generally at that time when I started my career Galway teams were considered a small bit soft. Known as a county that would hurl away for 50 minutes but when the pressure comes on, they fall away. Thankfully I think that has changed somewhat over the past 10 years or so.

But on top of all that, it was nearly always competitive. I think Kilkenny liked that more than anything. They loved competition, they loved being tested. I always got the sense they enjoyed that more than walking through teams in Leinster.

We built up a good rivalry with them over the years but it was totally different from the rivalries you’d have with other counties. Even though Galway were always a team that gave Brian Cody’s Kilkenny teams trouble long before I came along, there was never any spite between the two counties. There was no irrational hatred, none of that stuff at all.

In Galway, our traditional rivals were Tipperary and Clare. You build that stuff up over generations. We lived in Portumna and if Tipperary beat Galway, you’d have Tipp people calling into town and hanging around for a week after the game to let you know all about it. if Galway beat Tipp, you wouldn’t see them for a month. And you’d let them know all about it the next time they darkened the door.

But with Kilkenny, there was none of that. The two counties would meet in an All-Ireland semi-final or final and then they might not come across each other for another five years. Galway people didn’t run into Kilkenny people on the street or in the pub or at the post office. We were just two counties living on opposite coasts that ran into each other the odd time.

When we joined the Leinster Championship, the rivalry got ramped up but it still wasn’t the kind of thing where you wanted to absolutely nail this crowd and send them home with their tails between their legs. Around a quarter of all Galway v Kilkenny championship matches in history have happened since 2009. We were coming into contact with each other pretty much every year. But even so, it never got out of hand or ugly or anything like that.

I think what it came down to was the fact that there was a huge respect there between both counties. That isn’t always the case with every county but between us and Kilkenny, that’s how it was. There was no hatred, no spite, nothing like that. The games were always huge occasions and there was very rarely a big margin between us.

The one year we beat them well was in the 2012 Leinster final. I didn’t see that coming at all. I heard plenty of fellas say afterwards that they knew it was going to happen but that always felt like bulls**t to me. I didn’t see us making such a fast start or pulling away from them so easily. No way.

And in the end, it didn’t do us a lot of good that year. Beating Kilkenny once is hard enough. Having to play them three times, it’s highly likely that they’re going to get the better of you at least once. When all was said and done, they won the one that mattered most, beating us in the replay in the All-Ireland final. I’d have happily taken a beating in the Leinster final if we could have kept our shock win until September.

We had some huge matches against them. The drawn game in Tullamore in 2014 was a mad night. We were 10 points down or something like that at one stage but we managed to get back into it later on and then Henry Shefflin and I traded scores to grab a draw. They beat us in the replay the following week and then we were out against Tipp six days later. Three massive games in 13 days and we were gone from the championship.

The day of the painted grass in 2018 was a big step, purely because we were now able to play them on our home patch. It’s kind of mad that it took nine years for us to get a home game but that just goes to show that there’s always a small bit of resistance in Leinster to us being there. But funny, the one place I never found that resistance is Kilkenny. Even now, our minors aren’t allowed to play in the Leinster Championship but the vibe I get is that Kilkenny would have no issue with it.

Kilkenny always want to go again. They want the competition. They pick themselves up after you beat them and get ready for the next time. Think back to 2012 and that hammering in the Leinster final. We knew they’d be gunning for us when we met in the final later that year and we were ready for it. But we weren’t ready for Cody pulling Walter Walsh out of a hat in the replay. Pretty much nobody had ever heard of him and he came in on Johnny Coen and scored 1-3. That was Kilkenny for you, always pushing, always trying to find a way.

That’s my one worry for Galway this weekend. Beating them by a point in Salthill, especially with the way that game ended, that makes Kilkenny a dangerous animal heading into this final. They’re coming into the game in the right frame of mind — annoyed, cranky, looking to settle the score from the last day. That’s where you want to be. Also, people forget they’re going for three-in-a-row in Leinster. They’re nobody’s fools.

Galway probably have the more settled 15 but to me, that makes them easier to prepare for than Kilkenny. The moving parts in the Kilkenny team are around their best players. We don’t know where TJ Reid will play. We don’t know where Eoin Cody will play. We don’t know where Pádraig Walsh will play. Cody has always been a master of keeping people guessing and so we won’t know until 30 seconds after the anthem is finished where all these guys are going to line up.

It’s a massive game and neither side will struggle for motivation. Win it and you’re in an All-Ireland semi-final. Lose it and you have a minefield to get through next time out. One way or the other, you’ll walk off the pitch knowing you’ve been in a game.

Kilkenny are obviously pissed off after their two recent losses. A wounded cat is a dangerous cat.