This article is from page 70 of the 2011-08-09 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 70 JPG
BEFORE Galway manager Mattie Murphy could settle comfortably into his chair, the inevitable quizzing of extra-time was broached. Did he know there would be an additional period and more to the point, when did he know?
“Nobody knew. RTÉ didn’t know, we didn’t know but sure, they only tell us these things. They can turnaround and reschedule matches as they go along. If you look at the schedule for matches, the Munster champions are supposed to be in Croke Park next Sunday and we had budgeted for that. All of a sudden, out of the blue, they move it.
“We would have gladly taken a replay at that stage because I thought the advantage might be that they had been through a strenuous Munster campaign and had two games since the Leaving Cert, I thought maybe it would be an advantage to them in terms of conditioning and fitness but thanks be to God, we matched them in that anyway.”
Once the teams were told and refocused, was he surprised how strongly Galway finished?
“I leave the conditioning of the lads and the training of the lads to Mike Haverty. He was happy enough with their levels of fitness but I think, no matter what level of fitness you have, if the head and the heart isn’t right, then you are going to be in trouble. Even if you were a couple of sessions short of physical fitness, the heart and head will carry you through if you are mentally strong and we showed in extra-time that we are mentally very strong.”
Very strong finishers in normal time too thanks to Gerard O’Donoghue’s injury-time scrambled goal that earned his side that extra chance.
“The goal was one of those dithery ones that was kicked over the line but they are all three points. Even if you hit a cracker from 40 yards to the net, it’s still only three points you get but I was still happy to see it going over the line anyway.
“I thought we were hesitant and paid them too much respect in the first half and we really didn’t settle into our pattern. We let them dictate the trend of the game in the first half. They were very busy, they were getting in tackles, left, right and centre and they were in our faces and some of our lads didn’t like that. All of a sudden, we found out that if we put ourselves on the front foot that they weren’t too happy with that either.”
Then there was the substitute factor that only highlighted the strengthin-depth of this Galway squad, with four different replacements grabbing a combined seven point haul.
“That wouldn’t be a surprise to us now because in the last few training matches, the B team beat the A team so there was a couple of fellas who were kind of half perplexed why they weren’t on the first fifteen and so they had an agenda when they did get on and thank God, they took it that way and went out to prove us wrong.
“We have a serious job picking 24 not to mind a team for the final. There are fellas not making the 24 that are quality hurlers and would be welcomed in any county. So these fellas that are writing the obituary of hurling in Galway, if there is anything wrong, it’s not at Under 18 or 16 level.”
Nothing at all wrong with their minor squad who must now be hot favourites to capture Mattie Murphy’s sixth All-Ireland minor title.