Sport

Long tradition of Galway teams knocking at the door

Since their 1970s revival Galway have figured in 11 All-Ireland finals and at times in the 1940s and ’50s they proved competitive…

Fri Sept 07 2012 - 01:00

Since their 1970s revival Galway have figured in 11 All-Ireland finals and at times in the 1940s and '50s they proved competitive, writes SEÁN MORAN

GALWAY’S history of hurling disappointment isn’t restricted to the modern era. There was a time in the 1940s and 1950s when the county was agonisingly close to winning All-Irelands.

Since the 1970s revival restored Galway to hurling’s top table the county has lost eight finals, 1975, ’79, ’85, ’86, ’90, ’93, 2001 and ’05, and won three, 1980, ’87 and ’88.

But in the preceding generation there were also heartaches. Tight semi-final defeats against Cork and Kilkenny teams that went on to win the All-Ireland happened three times during the period.

READ MORE

In the 1950s Galway contested three finals. In 1953 they beat Kilkenny and lost to Cork in the final by a late goal. Although they were more emphatically beaten in the other two, there were structural reasons, according to one of the county’s most legendary hurlers, Jimmy Duggan, that militated against their challenge – principally the lack of provincial championship matches, an issue that would continuously stalk Galway until the late 1990s.

“It was the main factor in Galway not progressing in the 1940s and ’50s,” he says. “We only got one match while the teams we were playing had come through provincial championships. In 1955 I captained the team against Wexford in the All-Ireland final and we’d got a bye from Central Council – to promote the game in Connacht. It was the same in 1958.

“It’s hard enough going into a semi-final with no games played but imagine a final. The league and the Railway Cup were our only competitions and they were early in the year. Had we got matches like the seniors have now in Leinster, we could have tried out more players in match situations.”

That Galway received a bye to finals wasn’t outlandish at the time. The county had a fine team, forged in the disappointment of the 1940s – the late Breandán Ó hEithir’s memoir Over the Bar recalls the sense of crestfallen shock at the 1947 semi-final in Birr when a match Galway had apparently won by a point was reconvened after the final whistle only for Kilkenny to score two late points.

Duggan’s brother Seán, still with us at 90, was a brilliant goalkeeper. In the excellent All-Ireland final supplement of the current Tuam Herald, Jim Carney recalls an interview with Tony Reddin, the Tipperary goalkeeper from Galway who was a laureate on both the GAA’s Centenary Team of 1984 and the Team of the Millennium 16 years later.

“I knew in my heart that nobody would get Seánie Duggan’s county jersey off him,” Reddin told Carney when explaining his move to Tipperary.

Jimmy Duggan advances as evidence for his argument the team’s experience after the heavy All-Ireland defeat of 1958.

At that time the Oireachtas tournament was held within weeks of the All-Ireland final and was popular with supporters and taken seriously by teams.

It mightn’t have had the visceral edge of championship but it was genuinely contested.

Galway defeated Kilkenny in the semi-final and Wexford beat Tipperary. In the final Galway trounced Wexford, then halfway between the All-Irelands of 1956 and 1960.

“We trained very hard for the Tipperary match,” says Duggan of the 1958 All-Ireland, “but it was difficult because Tipp had played three matches in Munster.

“We beat Kilkenny and then played Wexford in Thurles in the final and won well so that showed what we could have done if we’d had a bit more match practice going into the All-Ireland.”

Galway’s hurling fortunes changed in the years that followed.

A dispiriting decade contesting the Munster championship with little success followed.

“We didn’t have the same quality in the 1960s,” he says, “because the players who came so close in the 1940s and ’50s mostly retired after 1958, so we weren’t really up to it and over the years won just one match, against Clare. When you don’t have the material or the matches you don’t progress.”

For the immediate future Jimmy Duggan will be back in Croke Park on Sunday hoping for the same thing he played for in the 1950s, a Galway All-Ireland.

“I’ll be there,” he says. “You can wave at me.”

* THE GAA has warned it will take action to counter tickets being sold on touting websites. All tickets are distributed through county boards and clubs and the association said in a statement yesterday it will automatically cancel the bar codes on any such seat numbers.