Micheál Donoghue: 'The shortest route is the best route. That's the biggest carrot of all for us'

Irish Examiner

4 days ago

Seven years. Seven years since David Burke looked out at a small sea of maroon from halfway up Thurles' Ryan Stand. Seven years since Galway last ruled their adopted province.
Seven years is not a huge gap in the eyes of then and present manager Micheál Donoghue. But such is the length of time he's spent on the Galway sideline, he knows full well that seven years is a significant period and sizable wait for those that populate the stands around him.
There are five survivors from the 2018 Leinster final winning team still populating the dressing-room. They are the two Burke's, Daithí and David, the two Mannion's, Cathal and Pádraic, and Conor Whelan. Two more - Conor Cooney and Jason Flynn - came off the bench. Tom Monaghan came off the bench for the Leinster final win of 12 months previous.
Galway have used 30 players in the championship to date. That's 22 of them that have never been part of the action during a successful Leinster final outing. That's a lot of lads without a meaningful medal. We and they do not count the shared League title of 2021.
'When we came in everyone was going on about the four-year term. But for us, we wanted to hit the ground running and be as competitive as you can. If you go through the group, there's a lot that haven't got a Leinster medal. The lads are highly motivated to get one,' said the Galway boss.
'It's an opportunity to win silverware but when you're involved in it, the shortest route is the best route. That's the biggest carrot of all for us.'
Galway have unsuccessfully contested three provincial deciders since the 2018 triumph. All three were against Kilkenny. Sunday afternoon will be the fourth. The expectation has never been less as that surrounding this latest attempt.
That, of course, has everything to do with what happened when the counties clashed on the opening weekend of the championship. A 12-point pumping by the hosts.
Whether we can believe him or not, Donoghue says the hammering hasn't been referenced in the Galway dressing-room since.
'In the media, it's constantly being referenced. Obviously, we addressed it and analysed it [at the time] but we then moved on straightaway. It was just buried after that.
'If that was a low base for us, we just had to be better the next day. And as we've progressed through the round-robin, we have gotten better.'
Their championship start perfectly mirrored their League conclusion. A 12-point hammering to finish one competition and a 12-point hammering to begin another.
The results risked prompting a crisis of process. Donoghue's second coming was traveling in a worrying direction. A mid-campaign rethink or persevere with the plan? The latter won out, even if there was a tweak here and there such as Cianan Fahy from midfield to half-back and Conor Whelan from the inside line to half-forward.
'The disappointing thing was we weren't transferring what we were doing on the training ground into a match situation, and it was just to make sure as we moved forward that that was the case.
'The Dublin performance was definitely up there [as our best of the championship] because obviously we knew what was at stake, number one. Number two, it's a hard place to go. Number three then, the weather.
'Winning is a bit of a habit and out of winning you get a lot of confidence, and you can see the confidence growing within the lads. Training was going really well, so we knew we were in a decent position, and that was really reflective of the performance.'
Kilkenny twice achieved a Leinster six-in-a-row during the Brian Cody era. The second of those ended as a seven-in-a-row. Derek Lyng's crop wouldn't be considered a patch on those teams and yet here they stand on the cusp of equaling those dominant streaks. The county has lost only three Leinster finals over the past 28 years. Two of those were against the maroon. Can Galway again be a pebble in the Kilkenny shoe?
'We know that we have to turn up and be the best version of ourselves to make sure we can compete. We're looking forward to it.'