Galway conundrum continues to mystify

SIDELINE CUT:With the city heaving amid the merriment of Race Week, Galway hurling supporters are once again left to ponder another year of unfulfilled hopes, writes Keith Duggan.

IT WILL be precious little consolation to the Galway hurlers that their indecently early exit from the All-Ireland championship means they are now free to enjoy the hedonism of Race Week. In Galway, everyone downs tools for the ponies- and-fancy-skirts bash. Traditionally, the week marks the official beginning of the builders' holidays but in and around the city, everyone, except those in the bar and bookies trade, stops working.

Many are the poor souls that have gotten all gowned up in a Galway surgical theatre to have a wisdom tooth removed or the ould veins done only to find themselves lying on the operating theatre suddenly aware that the usual clatter and din of hospital life have stopped and they are, very definitely and very terrifyingly, alone.

During Race Week, the normal "Back In 10 Minutes" sign pasted to the chip shop is replaced by "Back After the 5.40". The rule of thumb is if it can wait, it will wait.

Galway folks observe Race Week the way Muslims observe Ramadan. You just do not work. Because Race Week takes up where the Arts Festival leaves off, there is an immediate and a dramatic cultural shift and feel around the city: the purple-hair crowd ship out and the purple-shirt crowd flood in, ditching the convertibles in the parking lots around the city and partying like it was 2007.

Out go the flame-throwers, South American limbo dancers and gloomy poets and in come the Race set, most of whom seem intent on dressing like Warren Beatty and the cast of Bugsy.

There is, in case you haven't heard, talk of a recession in Ireland. Many of the more absurd vignettes of Celtic Tiger excess have centred around Galway Race Week, not least the practice of the 300-buck helicopter ride to the bottom of the hill out in Ballybrit. But the big summer race meeting still brings in a crowd and there is no doubt the saloons in and around Quay Street will be doing brisk business next week.

Sometimes it is hard to see how something as traditional and venerable as hurling has room to breathe in a city that plays host to such a diverse range of entertainments. But in the back rooms of the Galway pubs, the quick demise of the current crop of maroon hurlers, the latest instalment of the best and the brightest, will be chief among the topic of conversations.

Many revellers and visitors to the city will plan their weekend afternoons around watching the All-Ireland hurling qualifiers. Bar wo/men around Galway are masters at humouring earnest Europeans and gabby Americans who order a pint of stout and wait to receive it with the rapturous anticipation of the devout at the Vatican.

They are old hands at fielding stock questions about the Irish language, where to get a spin on a Galway Hooker, whether Yeats still drinks here and when it might stop raining. And if a hurling match happens to be on television, they will brace themselves for a series of stunned questions about this spectacle. The Clare-Cork and Waterford-Wexford clashes are bound to attract the attention of strangers and will inevitably bring a new and baffling enquiry: "How come Galway are not playing?" To which the likely reply will be a gruff, "Same again?"

Because there can be no simple or straight answer. There is little comfort to be drawn from the fact that, a week ago in Thurles, Galway met a side that long ago perfected the one priceless virtue that has eluded maroon teams for the past 10 years.

Cork have managed to elevate their sense of team into a brotherhood, where the power of the collective will carry the limitations of the individual. The imponderable for a succession of Galway hurling managers has been to try to coax and coerce an enviable cast of individual talents into a cohesive and consistent summer team. Ger Loughnane, ashen and honest after last Saturday evening's thriller, has been the latest to try and to fail.

Much conspired against Galway. They met a proud team smarting at the way they were widely dismissed as "all washed up" after losing to Tipperary. Cork were always going to come out with the wildness of a wounded animal. But the tipping point was when Donal Óg Cusack was sent off. Had this occurred just after half-time, then perhaps the remaining Cork players would have been too gobsmacked at the sight of their totemic goalkeeper leaving the field to be able to hurl on with their usual composure.

But that the Cloyne man was sent walking just before the break meant when the 14 Cork men took the field again, after those minutes together in the dressingroom, they were playing for a cause that, in their minds, transcended the mere winning of an All-Ireland championship match. They believed they were defending the honour of Cusack, who had always worn his heart on his sleeve when it came to defending them.

Even Loughnane at his most oratorical and inspiring could not have expected to light a fire in the Galway men equal to that burning in Cork bellies when the teams returned to the field. From that point of view, it was the toughest scenario imaginable for a Galway team that, while arguably high on talent, was brittle in terms of confidence and experience.

Dire straits enabled Cork to tap into the frequency that had been missing against Tipperary and they played a simple, urgent and devastating game that made the Galway men look more unsure and lost with every passing minute.

There is no doubt the prevailing All-Ireland system is tilted against Galway. Sometimes hurling people in the West must wonder if the powers-that-be would prefer if they disappeared altogether. But Galway teams were dropped into the heat of an All-Ireland semi-final under the old system and they were able to perform.

Not for the first time in recent years, there was an abdication not so much of duty but of promise by the Galway players, a failure to perform that has become mystifying. You only had to look at their faces to see how savagely disappointed they were to be beaten. Yet when this match is crudely reduced by the passing years, it will be remembered as the balmy evening when Joe Canning took on Cork.

Even as the Galway team fell apart, the match held the electric and thrilling possibility that the Portumna teenager would simply refuse to be beaten and as he piled on miracle point after miracle point, the more optimistic Galway follower could hold onto the hope that he would plunder a goal from nothing, à la Tipperary in the league final.

Canning's individual heroism and the almost spiritual response from the Cork team to the starkness of their half-time situation made the qualifying match a wonderful spectacle. But in Galway, that cannot hide the fact that they are farther out in the cold than ever. From 1988 to 2008 without an All-Ireland senior championship - and counting - suggests there is something lacking in the Galway game that all the underage and even club glories cannot hide.

There is no question but Galway must accept the offer to participate in the Leinster championship now. There was something wonderfully free-spirited about their independent pursuit of excellence but it has become abundantly clear it no longer works at the highest level. If Ger Loughnane resigns or is persuaded from within to relinquish his position, then the last two years have been a waste. If Loughnane still believes he can unlock what has become a puzzle, then he ought to give - and be given - another season to try to restore Galway hurling to glory.