FORMER GALWAY HURLING ace Peter Finnerty has expressed sympathy for his embattled former teammate Anthony Cunningham, who is fighting to hold onto his position as the county’s senior hurling team manager.
Cunningham is facing down a vote of no confidence from current Galway stars and Finnerty admits that his position is now untenable.
Speaking to RTÉ’s Sunday Sport yesterday, Finnerty also insisted that the beaten All-Ireland finalists must take a huge chunk of responsibility for their failure to beat Kilkenny in the September decider.
“Absolutely shocked,” Finnerty said. “Everybody in Galway is shocked in the hurling fraternity.
“Was I happy after the All-Ireland final? No. Did I think Anthony deserved to get another year? Definitely yes.
“I don’t think the likes of Cathal Mannion, John Hanbury, Padraig Mannion, young (Conor) Whelan, they don’t need a different voice in the dressing room now.
“What they need is continuity. I won’t sit on the fence on this – I don’t think Anthony deserved another year last year. His term was over (after 2014) but he took over, built it up and we got to an All-Ireland final.
“He shook hands after the Leinster final with Brian Cody, looked him in the eye and said ‘I’ll see you in the All-Ireland final’.
“It was a brave thing to say and he did see him in the All-Ireland final.
“At half-time, we were four points up, had Kilkenny on the rack and whether you like it or not, you don’t get into that position against Kilkenny in any game unless your management is doing something right.
“The players can say what they want and do what they want and blame who they want but it wasn’t Anthony inside the whitewash in the second half.”
And Finnerty insisted that under Cunningham in the All-Ireland semi-final against Tipperary, he saw the best hurling ever from a Galway team.
“Probably the best game I’ve ever seen Galway play, because I didn’t see our own team play because I was playing on those teams,” said the two-time All-Ireland winning defender.
“In 2005 (semi-final) we had a great win against Kilkenny, and other great wins like the 2001 semi-final (against Kilkenny) but I never saw a team so united, so jointed, a management team working so well and then suddenly you get to a final. If you stopped the clock at half-time, would anyone be disappointed with Galway? No.
“The next 35 minutes, the whole thing fell apart and the players can’t blame Anthony for that.
“I don’t think the players have a right to blame anybody for that except themselves.”
“The players let themselves down in the second half.”
Finnerty believes that Galway is now in a better place than 2012, when Cunningham guided the Tribesmen to an All-Ireland final against Kilkenny, losing after a replay.
But after the players opted to vote him out, Finnerty admits that Cunningham is on borrowed time.
“It actually is untenable. How can you go back into a dressing room and motivate people who don’t want you in the dressing room? It was the same thing for Pat Holmes and Noel Connelly. They decided that the best thing to do for Mayo football was to step aside.
“It was the right decision and unfortunately it has to be the same for Anthony.
“But it doesn’t make it right. The last time this happened in Galway, and it did happen in Galway before, Galway had appointed two great people in Sean Silke and Joe Cooney to lead Galway forward.
“Then suddenly the players said we don’t really want this, we want the best man in the world and we went down and got Ger Loughnane.
“It was a disaster for two years. It even went to a point where I got so frustrated that I almost wanted to tell Ger Loughnaen to go home.”
“It doesn’t work when players start telling everybody what they want, I don’t think this will work either for Galway. It’s a disaster for Galway at the moment.”
