Can Anthony Cunningham's side shed the county's habitual inconsistency and produce another big performance – this time against Cork, asks MALACHY CLERKIN

THE PAINT was barely dry on Galway’s Leinster final masterpiece but Anthony Cunningham was down to tone-setting business already. Flanked by his two selectors Tom Helebert and Mattie Kenny, he aired the oldest sorrowful mystery of Galway hurling himself, before we sad sacks in the press seats even got our throats cleared to bring it up.

“It’s no use winning today unless we get consistency,” he said. “We’ve reminded everyone that we’ve always had great days here in semi-finals and whatever and then failed to turn up the next day. We do need consistency and that’s the big challenge for us, for our players and our management, and we’ll be looking to put that record straight.”

It’s a record that stinks, no getting away from it. Galway’s inability to back up anything from a fair-to-middling win to the occasional floor-stomper over the past decade is so much a part of them now that it must feel like it’s tattooed on to their foreheads.

The All-Ireland final defeats that followed wins over Kilkenny in 2001 and ’05 are the ones that got neon-lit but there have been others as well, slow-puncture days that drained them of life and bought them a reputation.

Like in 2002, when a 0-21 to 1-9 win over Cork served only to build them up for a one-point defeat to Clare a fortnight later. Or the following year, when they took revenge on that Clare team only to find Tipp a point too good the next day.

Or even more latterly, like in 2009 when wins over Clare and Cork (again, revenge for a numbing defeat the previous year) led to a quarter-final defeat to Waterford (again by just a point). They’ve beaten Tipp, they’ve beaten Kilkenny – in 2005 they beat them both – and still they wait, 24 years next month since their last All-Ireland. These are the times that try men’s souls.

So what’s it all about?

Pearse Piggott was there 24 years ago as a player and has put in a four-year stint as a selector under Conor Hayes since. He saw more bad days than good but he was there on the line for the win over Kilkenny in 2005. Liam MacCarthy went to Cork that year instead of back to the west, though, and he totes a heavy load from that year’s All-Ireland final with him still.

Bring it up and off the top of his head he tells you about Galway’s nine scoring chances in the closing seven minutes and the 56 per cent possession stats they had at the end of that game.

“Until the day I die,” he says, “I will regret that we didn’t get home in ’05. It hurts that bad. It has been so hard over the last decade to make a breakthrough because Kilkenny, Tipperary and Cork have been so dominant.

“The big thing in life you’ve got to have is consistency. We went into a final on a wave of hype. You’re far better off going in low-key but that wasn’t possible because in Galway we’re starved for success. If you take how the country came to a standstill for Katie Taylor this week, that’s the way Galway are about hurling success. Totally starved, crying out for it.”

Alan Kerins can name that tune in one. He played in the 2001 and 2005 All-Ireland finals and found them totally different experiences. The mistakes they made in the build up to the first one were quietly rectified for the second.

Problem was, they ran into a Cork team that was playing in its third All-Ireland final in three years whereas Galway had turned over half a team in the four years since Tipp had beaten them in ’01. Experience had its day.

Not everyone is able to block out the maelstrom, especially when it’s the first time they walk out into it. A big championship win is a sugar rush and it takes careful observation to keep you from running into walls.

That hasn’t always happened in Galway where the caterpillar of scepticism never takes long to become a butterfly of hope. One good win is usually all it takes.

“You can be distracted from what you’re there for,” says Kerins. “Everybody jumps on the bandwagon. There’s nobody there in January, February or March or even when you play a quarter-final. But all of a sudden people want tickets, they want interviews. It will distract you unless you’re prepared for it properly. But you need to experience it too because that’s how you learn to deal with it. Eventually you work out that the real reason you’re there is to play hurling and not to be engaging in all this razzmatazz.

“As the years go by without an All-Ireland, the hunger and the demand for one builds and builds. But it’s up to the players to deal with that and handle it and I think there are a lot better structures there now than when I was involved. People are more aware of the need for psychological preparation in the GAA.

“It’s seen as just as important as the physical preparation these days. There’s very little between the top teams now that it comes down to who reacts best to the pressures of the big day. Who can concentrate on their performance and not be put off by the outside factors or their environment.”

Still, Galway aren’t unique in having trouble dealing with big days. Yet nobody holds, say, Waterford’s feet to the flame in quite the same way as they do Galway’s. For Kerins, there’s a simple enough explanation – up until recently, Galway never had the chance to build up credit over the course of a season.

Before they entered Leinster, they had to aim at one day and hope it carried them through to the next test in decent enough order. Hence the occasional streak of bright light, hence the subsequent flame-outs.

“Back then,” says Kerins, “we had no Leinster final to get to so there was nothing to back up. We’d have only one game behind us before we’d play one of the big teams. And even if we won, there was no momentum built up. You’d win a semi-final and all of a sudden you were in a final with only one serious game behind you going up against a Munster team who had three or four games played.

“Contrast that with this year’s team that was able to find its feet against Westmeath and Offaly and get a settled team before meeting Kilkenny. They even had a couple of championship-style matches against Dublin at the end of the league. That momentum has been building and so they go into an All Ireland semi-final now battle-hardened and hopefully ready. In the old days, that option just wasn’t there.”

Pearse Piggott remembers well the summer when they decided it all had to change. On the last Saturday in June 2004, they headed for Ballycran on the Ards peninsula to play Down. The ferry across was delayed and they had to scramble to make the throw-in time at all. In the end they beat Down by 17 points but the whole day felt like an exercise in slapstick. Kilkenny put 4-20 on them in the next round and that was it, year over in mid-July.

“The hammering Kilkenny and Cody gave us that year taught us so much,” says Piggott. “We realised there and then that day we needed to be going into the championship on the same day as everybody else. From that defeat onwards, we pushed for joining the Leinster Championship.

“We pushed very aggressively. I’ve always believed Offaly would never have won All-Irelands until they learned to beat Kilkenny. We needed to be given the chance to do that, we needed to be able to do what Fergal Moore did – climb the steps of the Hogan Stand and lift the Bob O’Keeffe Cup.”

It won’t happen every year obviously but they needed it to happen at least once. Now Galway have other worries. The five-week gap since their day of days has caught provincial winners out before when they’ve had to deal with it first time.

And, Leinster champions or not, the hunger for September is as strong as ever. Only 22,000 turned up to see them beat Kilkenny – we can bank on far more than that being interested in them tomorrow.

Hope and hype will dance their dance.

Time for Galway to look about changing the music.