FOCUS ON GALWAY FOOTBALL: KEITH DUGGANprofiles the manager who, steeped in Galway's footballing tradition, has been charged with the responsibility of returning the county to the game's top tier
IF THE turbulence of the last few years has been of any benefit to Galway football, it has served to reduce expectation to the low water mark of the early 1990s. That period of maroon football history coincided with the emergence of Alan Mulholland as a through-and-through city footballer who had come through the coaching schools of Liam Sammon. Mulholland’s quality was obvious and, like many players of his generation, he did not have the opportunity to shine as he might have done.
Instead, he had the vivid experience of playing for a Galway team trapped between an illustrious past and an indifferent present.
Has the state of Galway football returned to that low point? Making an assessment on that is the immediate task facing Mulholland now that he has been officially appointed as the new Galway manager, weeks after his selection was seen as automatic. Mulholland’s All-Ireland successes with the minor team of 2007 and the under-21 team this spring are the most obvious indicators of reasons to be confident. But as the intercounty scene begins its close season, the new manager will most likely canvas experienced and new players to try to gauge the mood after the battering team morale has taken in recent seasons.
“What is wrong with Galway football at the moment is Galway football,” says Pat Comer, a former team-mate of Mulholland with Salthill-Knocknacarra and Galway.
“We are learning that you can’t wave a wand and bring someone like Joe Kernan in and fix it. Alan has done work at underage and knows the structures in the county. There is a lack of confidence there right now. I think it is too much to expect anyone to come along cold into the county and turn it around. It is as much about what you hear on the street as anything – they have that connection and the emotional attachment to the place. That is important.”
Since the All-Ireland quarter-final loss to Kerry in 2002, there has been a perception that Galway football has been moving in ever decreasing circles.
The All-Ireland-winning teams that John O’Mahony had managed were beginning to break up. From 2004-2009 Galway vied with Mayo as the brand leaders of Connacht football but have since slipped back a notch in the last few years.
Their performance in a thrilling 2008 All-Ireland quarter-final against Kerry – a festival of old-fashioned attack in the rain – was an indication that they had rediscovered their form, even if that match ended in defeat.
But Sammon, whose management style championed the traditional attacking football which Galway played, stepped down in perplexing circumstances a year later. That was followed by the wild-card appointment of Joe Kernan.
The hope was that the Armagh man’s steel and experience could whip a talented team into viable contenders but instead it petered out with a rainy Saturday afternoon qualifier defeat to Wexford in Pearse Stadium. The lack of atmosphere and small crowd was as much of an indictment as the result. Tomás Ó Flatharta took over with the aftertaste of Kernan’s abrupt and unhappy departure still lingering and his first year was on the back foot from the beginning.
No team was subject to the scrutiny that Galway were during the league and three losses from the first three games seemed to substantiate the notion that this was a team in freefall. The close of the league – an eye-catching win against Armagh and a spirited draw against future All-Ireland champions Dublin – led to a quick revision. But the championship was a disaster: a miserable exit in the Connacht championship against Mayo, with rumours of a dressingroom row afterwards and then a one-point defeat in the qualifiers against Meath. It all meant that, excluding the perfunctory win against New York in 2010, Galway’s only championship win since their quarter-final exit in 2008 was their Connacht semi-final win against Sligo in 2009.
There may have been disagreement about how good Galway were but it was clear they were better than one championship win in three years. When you scanned Galway teamsheets, it was peppered with All-Ireland medal winners at senior and under-age grades.
“We need to get back to basics,” says Finian Hanley – the full back operated at midfield for most of last year and has become an indispensable player for the team.
“It is about rebuilding. Alan is a young manager with those underage successes and he can look to bring those guys in. I think what Alan will be doing is to start from scratch. He will want to get the best out of those young lads that he brought through and also the players that have been there for a few years. And there are good footballers out there too who maybe weren’t on the panel so he will be looking out for club players too. I think he will be looking for patience too.”
Hanley actually played on the same intermediate Salthill team as Mulholland in his mid-teens: two players going in opposite directions through a revolving door. But he has plenty of experience of Mulholland’s coaching style from under-10 on.
“He is a football coach in that he likes to have the fundamentals of passing right and gives players the opportunity to express themselves and to be natural on the ball. He is of that style. He was coached by Salmon and John Tobin who are renowned football coaches so I am sure he gained a lot of experience from them.”
Comer, too, observed Mulholland’s coaching methodology when he was invited to help out with the goalkeeping coaching for the 2007 Galway minor team. Comer had known Mulholland since his days as Salthill’s outstanding prospect. His memory of Mulholland at the club and Galway dressingrooms was of a circumspect player; he spoke infrequently but when he did his opinion was considered. But the rapport he struck with the minor players was plain to see.
“He just had a fresh approach and they saw him as a young manager with ideas, someone they could relate to. He is a smart guy and is someone who has played with Galway and is from here and I think he is well aware of what Galway people expect from their football. There is an expectation we play in the top tier. It’s not a God-given right and Galway football has gone off the radar but the expectation is there.”
The Mulholland family are long associated with Galway. Ned Mulholland, Alan’s grandfather, played on the 1938 All-Ireland winning team. His father Alan was mayor of Galway when the minor team had their homecoming in 1986. The family chain of betting offices are well-established and when Mulholland’s name was first mooted as a potential senior manager, there were fears he simply wouldn’t have been able to give the time to the post given a demanding day-job as managing director of the family business. That he decided to accept will have been a relief. Now, he inherits a team trapped in the same vortex as his own Galway teams were.
Mulholland was a member of the richly-gifted 1986 Galway minor team which won the All-Ireland and was fast-tracked through to the senior side.
A Connacht senior championship medal followed in 1987 and an Under-21 Connacht medal in 1989. By 1990, he was a member of the Irish team that travelled to Australia for the International Rules, called in as a late replacement for Greg Blaney of Down. But by 1992, he began to realise the law of diminishing returns applied to Galway and when he got a chance to work in Los Angeles as an aviation engineer, he took it.
He missed little in the meantime: he was back in the summer of 1995 when Galway qualified for a first All-Ireland semi-final since 1987. Mulholland replaced Tomás Mannion for that Tyrone match.
“I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t worth it,” he said at the time of his decision to quit on his football career and travel to the States. “It is great to see the buzz back now.”
Galway football got its act together in the next three years but by the time they won the All-Ireland title in an emotional burst from nothing, his football career had wound down. Now, he is responsible for making the Galway football team into contenders again.
“I do feel that it is a very good appointment,” Finian Hanley says. “The managers who preceded him did things in their own right and it didn’t work out. And players retired between 2004 and 2009, which made their job more difficult. We lost a lot of experience in those years, that has to be recognised.
“But we have had underage success and that should have kept us strong. And why that hasn’t happened is something everyone – from the county board on – has to look at. We know that this is a rebuilding process. But on the whole, Galway football is not in that bad a place. The trick now is to get those younger players from the successful teams coming through and performing on the biggest stage.”
