Farewell flop fails to dent Farrell's status as a winner

Cyril Farrell can breathe easy now. Another fretful and puzzling Sunday in Croke Park has left Galway hurling folk perplexed and saddened yet again but the manager's time for analysis and pondering is done.

"Yeah, my two-year term is up and I'm bowing out. That was my last campaign. It was something that the players and County Board have known for quite a while, so it's no surprise. There are plenty of individuals in Galway capable of getting this team going again," he said.

For almost 20 years, Farrell, with those doleful, sallow features, has been the public face of Galway hurling. He is eminently approachable and even-tempered man and his laid-back demeanour often belied the fractious nature of the county's hurling politics. All through last winter, he and Brendan Lynskey assured them selves that the current panel had the balance and preparation to shake off the dogged mediocrity of recent Championship years. Sunday spat it back in their faces.

"It was disappointing to go out like that, certainly," Farrell said. "We just couldn't get it going and Waterford, it seemed, couldn't put anything wide. That happens in hurling. We have said this many times before - and this isn't to take away from Waterford's performance - but you simply can't compensate for competitive hurling and that maybe told its own story on Sunday."

But even allowing for Galway's stunted preparation, the players seemed to hurl with an almost surreal bewilderment on Sunday, as though they were dazed by Waterford's fire and their own pale response.

"The funny thing is that it was only after the match that we realised the amount of chances we created. We just couldn't finish. We were chasing for most of the game, couldn't get on top in any area, really. But both teams could go out and hurl next Sunday and the opposite thing could happen.

"I remember in 1984, I think it was, we were absolutely awful in a semi-final but we came through again in the following years, and the same is true for this team. They will come back."

So many memories. The Galway game has been his life-blood almost from the day he first picked up a hurl. Learnt his trade playing with Tommie Larkins, a small south Galway club, and the sport quickly stole his soul. In 1980, he provoked a triumphant scream when he famously guided Galway to its second All-Ireland after 57 years of nothingness.

He was also there in the late 1980s when Galway established themselves as the game's nouveau riche, overshadowing the traditional counties on the way to successive All-Irelands.

Even when he stepped away after 1990, he couldn't bring himself to sever the ties and in 1996 he coaxed the county Under-21 team to an All-Ireland title. There was little surprise, then, when in the autumn of that year he took a deep breath and plunged into his third term at senior management. But the magic just didn't happen and now it's over. Obligingly, he lifts a receiver and attempts to condense a lifetime's work into a sentence.

"The highlights? God, I don't know. The winning was fairly good, I suppose, but there were plenty of losing days to go through as well. I think the real joy comes with seeing a hurler as a youngster and taking him along, helping him develop and maybe one day watching him hurl out of his skin in Croke Park. That's what it's about."

Young Galway hurlers. All over the county they illuminate the parish pitches, seemingly as preoccupied with the aesthetics of the sport as with the business of winning matches. Arguments raged over who might offer the most to the senior side. Accusations of indecision and a reluctance to establish a set 15 have steadily been flung in Farrell's direction and the defeat against Waterford will have done little to lessen his detractors. But it makes little odds now.

Farrell swallows criticism with the same nonchalance as he accepts praise.

"Before the Waterford game, I said we were well prepared but they just over-ran us. We came in from the cold and never got going. It doesn't mean Galway hurling is in dire straits or anything. There are plenty of young hurlers coming through still and that can only be a good thing for whoever takes over from here."

And that's it. A gruff old hurling dog walks away, his county still an enigma.