FOR THE FIRST time since 2012 and only the third occasion in the past 15 years, Corofin won’t be contesting the Galway senior football final.
The three-in-a-row All-Ireland champions – arguably the greatest club side ever seen – saw their reign in Galway ended by Mountbellew/Moylough last weekend. The conclusion of their 49-game unbeaten run drew plenty of national headlines, yet inside the county it wasn’t seen as the major shock that it was depicted as.
They’ve had several close scrapes within Galway in recent seasons. Many local clubs felt the age profile of Corofin’s leading figures meant they were vulnerable, but it’s another thing entirely to go out and beat them. Mountbellew have suffered at the hands of Corofin more than anyone else in the past decade, losing four finals (two after replays) to the kingpins since 2009.
“There has been a realisation when Kieran Fitzgerald retired,” Moycullen chariman and ex-Galway star Paul Clancy tells The42.
“If you looked at the extra-time against Kilcoo [in the All-Ireland final], it was the senior players in Corofin that really pulled them out. It was Kieran Fitzgerald, Gary Sice, Ciaran McGrath, the Farraghers, Daithi Burke.
“Daithi is playing a lot of hurling this year now with Turloughmore as well, Kieran is gone [retired]. There is a sense in Galway that this is going to end for Corofin. Did we think it was going to be last weekend? I gave Mountbellew a right chance.
“I think people knew it was probably coming, but when it was going to come and who it was going to be that was going to succeed them it was going to be one of three or four clubs.
“There’s a lot of big population areas like Satlhill, Claregalway, Oranmore, Moycullen – big population areas that are getting their act together. We were kind of lining up to see could we take them in the next couple of years. We find ourselves in the final now so we have the opportunity to win it this year.”
Mountbellew’s drought stretches back to December 1986, when current manager Val Daly was a player. He returned home from an International Rules trip in Australia to guide his club to their eighth county title and will be hoping to bring back number nine tomorrow afternoon.
Their opponents Moycullen are bidding to lift the Frank Fox Cup for the first time in their history. Their only trip to the decider came way back in 1977 when they lost to – you guessed it – Corofin by 1-9 to 0-3.
Beaten by Tuam Stars in last year’s semi-final, they gained revenge on at the same stage of the competition last weekend.
An All-Ireland winner with Galway in 1998 and 2001, Clancy was only installed as Moycullen chairman this year. He was still wearing the boots when they tasted All-Ireland intermediate success in 2008, with his brother Gearoid as captain, in what he puts down as one of his greatest days in the club jersey.
Manager Sean O’Dea brought Donie Buckley on board as coach and they went 27 straight games unbeaten between the league and championship en route to Croke Park glory.
Aside from his playing experience, Clancy has pedigree on the coaching front. He managed his native club a number of years ago with current boss – and his brother-in-law – Don Connellan as his selector.
He worked with the Galway U21s when they lifted the All-Ireland, before operating as selector with the senior side under Alan Mulholland and Laois seniors under Justin McNulty. Elsewhere he was involved with DIT’s Sigerson Cup side and managed Garrycastle in Westmeath.
Clancy laughs when he describes how he became involved as chairman. “Our outgoing chairman is very persuasive so he collared me at a fundraiser.”
It’s been a successful year for the club so far, with their intermediate hurlers also preparing for a county final. The footballers reached the semi-final last season for the first time in a long time. Now they’re just an hour away from history.
“We haven’t gone and put up a five-year plan or anything like that,” says Clancy. “Talking to the outgoing chairman, I was going to focus more on the football side and how we can develop our coaches, how we can support the senior squad?
“Identify any gaps we have in the team, what is it that’s stopping us getting to a county final? Now that was pre-Covid so we couldn’t have predicted the set of circumstances that threw us together.
“We would have said access to our players was a big issue. We would have said that having dual players when it comes to the crunch time of the season – both the hurling and football squads get depleted.
“While having two codes going is excellent, sometimes we don’t achieve everything at football or hurling [that we could] because we are a dual club. That has always been the draw on training or whatever, because the lads will have to play hurling one week and football the next.
“So we were looking at things like that and really it was around how can we bolster the squad, develop lads on the fringes. We know we have James McLaughlin, Paul Kelly and Daniel Cox coming through – how can we develop them into seniors?”
They have a healthy representation on Padraic Joyce’s panel: Gareth Bradshaw, Sean Kelly, Paul Kelly, Dessie Conneely and James McLaughlin.
Sharpshooter Conneely is the top-scorer in the championship this season, while McLoughlin is a future star. At 17, the 2019 Galway minor star has already been fast-tracked into the senior squad and standing at 6’4, he’s well able to handle himself at midfield.
Daniel Cox, goalscorer in last year’s All-Ireland minor final defeat to Cork, is another highly-rated prospect and currently a member of the county U20 squad.
“We have produced really good inter-county players in the club but what we have found difficult is integrating them back into the club with their seasons. The demands on them have been big.
“So then we’ve suffered and if you took a couple of dual players getting injured playing hurling or whatever, five playing inter-county and a few lads gone away, we just fell short at quarter-final stage. We seem to have had more access to our own players rather than them being spread out playing county and gone away.
“We have a lot of players who might go away in the summer and we’ve a lot of guys involved with Galway at different age groups. This year we’ve had all of those players and they’ve been training with the club so we’ve had huge numbers.
“That’s been for me the key to our success. We’ve had a couple of lads coming back. Eoin Kelly, brother of Sean & Paul, was in the States for a few years on a basketball scholarship and he’s home as well so small things like that added to the squad. We’ve nearly 40 on the squad.
“In fairness it happened really quickly. When they couldn’t go training with Galway and they were training with us, it just shows the potential we have when we’re all together.”
What’s also helped the club is the addition of some outside players for this season.
Antrim forward Owen Gallagher, who bagged 1-2 in the semi-final, works in Galway city as a doctor. Gallagher played under Maurice Sheridan and Connellan in NUIG for the past five years, lining out alongside Peter Cooke, Sean Kelly and Conneely. When Covid prevented him from travelling home to his native county regularly, he linked up with Moycullen.
Midfielder Tom Clarke is a locally-based Garda that transferred in from Knockmore. He missed out on a Mayo county medal with his home club two weeks ago and will be hoping to make up for that with top honours in Galway.
Yet they are without Peter Cooke, the midfielder that developed into a key man for Galway last summer.
“He kicked four points in the championship against Mayo down in Limerick one of his best displays,” says Clancy. “When he was leaving this year we were saying, ‘Where are the scores going to come from for us?’
“Peter would have been our big player last year and as it turns out I’d say we’re one of the highest-scoring teams in the championship. We scored 3-14 the last day which was great.”
They arrive in the final as underdogs even though they defeated Mountbellew by 14 points in the group stage in what was effectively a dead rubber – with both sides already through.
“We’re not the type of team who can afford to say, ‘We’re going down to play Mountbellow there’s nothing at stake.’ We can’t switch it on and off. We did go down there to play and we played pretty well,” says Clancy.
“We got game-time into guys and I thought that game served us well coming into the quarter-final. We were able to rest a few players and play a few other players. Some of those players are starting now. It might have been a dead rubber but it was a worthwhile exercise for us.”
Excitement is building in the club and Clancy says they’ll be exhausting every possibility to try and get club members into Pearse Stadium.
“We use every angle we can to try and get people into the stadium. We’ve had a few lads stewarding and things like that so anyway we can get people in we get them in.”
- Galway SFC final: Moycullen v Mountbellew-Moylough, Sunday 4pm, Pearse Stadium [streamed live by Galway GAA]
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