Calm leader pointing the way to the summit

Anthony Cunningham is a firm believer in the talent at his disposal in Galway and only an All-Ireland title will suffice, writes IAN O'RIORDAN

A YEAR in the life of Anthony Cunningham. Where to begin?

On the heels of Galway’s 10-point defeat to Waterford, in the All-Ireland quarter-final, to his appointment as hurling manager, dropping one-third of the panel, to condemning league champions Dublin to relegation, still doubling as Garrycastle football manager, guiding them to Croke Park on St Patrick’s Day, doubling as Galway under-21 manager too, to beating Kilkenny, a first Leinster title west of the Shannon, to an All-Ireland rematch in Croke Park.

To his life outside of hurling too – at home, just outside Kiltoom, at work, in Athlone IT, in software research, fighting for funding from Enterprise Ireland, to sitting down in an empty classroom in St Brigid’s in Loughrea to explain how on earth he finds the time.

“It’s your hobby,” he says. “You’d like it to be your job, too, because it is every day of the year, 365 days of the year, but it is totally enjoyable”

They all say it, that they wouldn’t do it if they didn’t enjoy it, yet more than most of the so-called modern managers, Cunningham seems to have found the perfect balance between the coming and the going, the pleasure and the pain.

Then he hasn’t rushed into it, either. At age 47, his own hurling days are well in the past, the minor and under-21 All-Irelands of 1983 and 1986, the back-to-back senior All-Irelands of 1987 and 1988.

Football was actually the learning ground, too, with St Brigid’s in Roscommon and then Garrycastle, and while he did manage the Roscommon hurlers for a year, in 2005, it was only when he guided Galway to the 2011 All-Ireland under-21 title that his ascendance to the senior role looked likely.

He was given a three-year term, told to take his time to get things right, which, if anything, would put him ahead of schedule.

“Well I wouldn’t say we are ahead,” he says. “Every year you start off you want to win the All-Ireland, and we knew Galway had the talent.

“What has taken us by surprise, really, is what the players have given us. Every time they trained we were amazed by their professionalism, the amount they do, and then the additional amount they do, which is unreal.

“They have wanted to learn so much, too, they have worked so hard, and have reaped the reward by reaching the final. But this is a high-stakes game, winner takes all. It is no use being second best, it is no use having a moral victory and saying, well ‘we advanced a lot this year’. That doesn’t wash.

“We took some hard decisions at the start of this year, got some criticism for it. We believed in the panel we put together, particularly that the young players coming in would advance more.”

Cunningham’s fellow under-21 selectors Mattie Kenny and Tom Helebert completed the senior backroom team, and that faith and togetherness spilled over the panel they ultimately assembled.

“I suppose the one thing we didn’t know was did we get the mix right, and there will always be criticism ‘Why didn’t you play this fella, why didn’t you play that fella?’ But we wanted to get a right blend there really.

“We met Fergal Moore early on, met a lot of the senior players early on, and they wanted to win an All-Ireland. They had no hesitation, they wanted it, no matter how many times you trained or what you did. So we knew early on that this was going to go in the right direction. We’d have a lot of belief in our own system as well.

“We have been a good while involved with teams, and you have to have conviction, I think. You can’t win unless you have the raw material and unless you get the response, and we got a huge response.”

Despite the severe cull last November, there is still a strong air of experience about this Galway team, and it’s helped on by Joe Canning’s return to form or the reforming of players such as Damien Hayes.

“But there was also an element that this was going to be a tougher regime,” says Cunningham, “and your level of fitness and the level of work you’re going to put in was going to be much higher. So, teams are going through whatever angle they’ll get, and we wanted to lay down a marker as well.

“But the likes of Tony Óg Regan, Fergal Moore, David Collins, we wouldn’t be getting this shot without them. They showed the leadership this year and I really hope that they get just reward for their effort because they’ve given some tremendous performances for Galway. It’s Damien Hayes’s 10th or 11th year.

“They’ve had some tough, tough times. In a sense the younger guys coming in who won an under-21 medal last year and is now in an All-Ireland final, he hasn’t seen the bad times. That’s going to drive these guys on as well.”

Juggling between Galway hurling and Garrycastle football defined the first three months of his year, and yet in many ways helped make it.

“Say on a Saturday, we’d train probably with Galway early in the morning. But it’s easy when you’re trying to win a Leinster with a club or you’re trying to get started with a county team. The enthusiasm that was there was second to none on both sets, so it was easy.”

But only now, as a senior All-Ireland winner with Galway, can he relate his own personal experiences of the big day to his team and tell them what’s required on this, the biggest stage of all.

What ultimately matters against Kilkenny on Sunday, and the importance of not letting this ultimate chance slip.

“That’s the big one. I think back in 1986, when we played Cork, we let in two goals before we knew we were even in the game. Sometimes management and players get caught up in the occasion, and you’ve got to impart that knowledge. Like the first 10 minutes, on Sunday, will be absolutely hectic, and if you don’t match Kilkenny then you’re not going to beat them.

“I think we’ve seen that in the last four or five years now, that the first five or 10 minutes in the hurling finals have been crunching tackles and that’s going to be no different this Sunday.”

CUNNINGHAM'S CODE: Kilkenny still setting the hurling benchmark

On Brian Cody’s fears that the referee will crack down after the Kilkenny-Tipperary semi-final

“All those games Kilkenny have been involved in, winning eight All-Ireland titles since 2000, those have been fantastic spectacles. There hasn’t been any dirty play. They play it hard and fair and I don’t think it’ll be any different the next day. It’ll be hard, fast and fair, an intense game, that’s what we expect from Kilkenny and it’s what they’ll expect from us.”

On the prospect of facing Kilkenny for the second time? “I’ve always said Kilkenny were the team to beat, and whoever beats them would win the All-Ireland. So it’s a match of the top teams in the country this year. The other thing Kilkenny bring to it is they are sportsmen. You never hear a Kilkenny player say ‘I’m this or I’m that . . . they’re so humble and right through our own days of playing, you never met a Kilkenny player who thought he was above his station.”

On Joe Canning’s return for form and fitness

“Definitely early in the season he put in tremendous work, then he got a couple of injuries that set him back slightly. We met with Joe early on, and the first couple of conversations, we stressed we wanted to get him back to his 2008 form. That first year Joe came on as a senior, a league semi-final against Cork in Limerick, he was nearly unmarkable. His nerve to go and score dipped a bit. I don’t think it was as a result of any lack of effort but if you’re a forward and your nerve dips your finish can dip. He really turned it around. I could ring Joe on a Monday night and we might have been training that night, and still he’d have been in the gym, or been in a recovery plunge pool.”

On taking the Galway under-21 job as well as the senior job

“Well it was very much built in with the seniors, so it was fine. Having said that we were very disappointed, to lose the All-Ireland semi-final, to Kilkenny. We had our chances . . . ”