MANY INTERCOUNTY PLAYERS, coaches and managers never tire of giving themselves a big old lick from the tips of their toes to the balding crowns when it comes to publicly proclaiming and praising the ‘culture and values’ within ‘the group.’
What this might entail will be set out by 30-odd players and 20-odd coaching, management and backroom staff in a hotel room or county training ground breakout room at some early point of a season.
Flip-charts will be used. Suggestions will be open from the floor. Some lads will be earnestly mad into it, peppering the lad with the felt-tip pen with suggestions, swept away in a feeling of evangelistic fervour.
And of course, there will be a few who sit with their arms folded, a force field against the torrents of bullshit. Who will sweat bullets if asked to contribute.
By the end of the exercise, a team has a set of mottos, targets, expectations and a general code of how to behave towards each other, with respect and unwavering support.
And that’s all well and good, right up to the point where you have to live it.
Pádraic Joyce’s big test came around the time of this year’s Connacht final when his full-back Seán Fitzgerald received notification that he had been accepted as a contestant on the television series Love Island, an experiment in calorie deficit dry-humping and enforced gossiping.
They had beaten Leitrim in a Connacht semi-final, but the performance was patchy and their lack of dominance of possession had to have been a worry.
Then, they unexpectedly lost to Roscommon in the decider. In the hotel afterwards, Joyce gathered his players around him and said that Fitzpatrick had some news.
Unorthodox news, for sure. And after making some jokes about it, Fitzpatrick claims Joyce said, “We’re going to back Fitzy 100 per cent.”
All of that is measured. It’s seeing the player as the person. It’s mature and respectful and all of that. Joyce lived some seriously high values at that moment. He met the moment.
But…here comes the bit in the middle of the LinkedIn post that flips the logic on its head.
It’s also absolutely mad.
Laughing after a provincial final loss?
After losing your full-back because of television obligations?
Let’s re-imagine it a small bit. Picture Dalo telling Ger Loughnane he was leaving the Clare panel in 1995 to try his luck handing out flyers for free shots outside an Ibiza nightclub?
What kind of reception, do you imagine, Jarly Óg Burns might have got in 2024 if he’d told Kieran McGeeney that winning an All-Ireland would be all well and good, but had he ever played spin the bottle?
Advertisement
Pádraic Joyce may have been entirely reasonable at this moment. A proper human.
Laszlo Geczo / INPHO
Laszlo Geczo / INPHO / INPHO
But to affect change, you need to be an unreasonable man. A heretic. A lunatic. A completely irrational header, an angry tyrant. Whatever it takes.
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world,” said Templeogue Synge Street clubman, George Bernard Shaw.
“The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
***
Reasonable
Perhaps he became more reasonable with age. There was a time when he seemed less so.
In Ciarán Murphy’s first-person account of being a Galway club footballer at a certain level in ‘This Is The Life’, he recalled his various fleeting glimpses and encounters of the generation that won the ’98 and ’01 All-Irelands.
There was no doubt that Joyce was the alpha male and the ultimate clubman.
‘He was genuinely mindbogglingly good for fifteen years with Killererin,’ wrote Murphy.
Joyce lifts the Galway championship Cup for Killererin. Lorraine O'Sullivan / INPHO
Lorraine O'Sullivan / INPHO / INPHO
Recounting how Tuam Stadium would be a focal point for staging entire weekends of club championship action, he recalled how there would be gangs of lads standing on the banks from various clubs after having played, or waiting to play a game.
‘And the giant figure at the centre of that broad circle was, of course, Joyce. He loved football so much, and lived for it so completely that he was barely ever a dispassionate viewer. And if players made mistakes he could be devastatingly cutting. I never thought he rated me as a player, but at least I knew that I was far from alone.’
***
Retirement
“I can’t go on playing forever,” said Pádraic Joyce on 14 July 2012.
He was 35 and he was after making a substitute appearance in Galway’s one-point round 2 qualifier defeat to Antrim in Casement Park (ask your parents).
His playing career wasn’t exactly a tale of riches to rags, but the beginning and end bear stark contrast given he came on board just in time for the 1998 All-Ireland win.
By that stage, Matthew Clancy and Joe Bergin had both left the panel earlier in the year. Joyce was the only man left standing from the 2001 All-Ireland.
He had 15 years as a player. Seven as a manager. 22 years of a 49-year-old life.
So maybe it’s time to move on.
James Crombie / INPHO
James Crombie / INPHO / INPHO
Or maybe it’s not, as he leaves the easel with some details of his masterpiece unfinished, like an AI clip that looks kosher until you notice someone is missing an arm.
In previous generations, seven years would have been seen as a fair old stint and, if the ultimate honours were not delivered in that time, definitely the right time to say farewell.
Only one man has bucked that trend and the McGeeney Factor – winning Sam Maguire in his tenth season – created a new layer of thought that county boards were better to stick with experience.
Long Haul
His former International Rules teammate Joyce appeared to be set for the long haul with Galway after defeat to Dublin in this year’s All-Ireland quarter-final, pointing out he had an arrangement to stay until the end of the 2028 season.
In his time, Galway football folks felt that the Shane Walsh-Damien Comer axis would eventually blunderbuss the team to an All-Ireland.
Along with an athletic midfield of Paul Conroy, John Maher, big leggy yokes like Matthew Tierney, Peter Cooke and Seán Kelly, creative defenders like John Daly and Kieran Molloy, and eventually, exhaustingly, it would all fall into place.
But Comer would get injured, Walsh would get injured. Others went travelling and Cooke was working abroad. They came close against Kerry in a classic final in 2022, and calved in a grind of a final two years later against Armagh.
Successive quarter-final losses to Meath and Dublin – especially the second when they were ahead going down the stretch – made it feel like they were circling a drain, even allowing for a four-in-a-row domination of Connacht.
Throughout all of that, Joyce displayed remarkable diplomacy. He never went groping for excuses like others. He never protected his own ego or deflected from the truth.
Review
In the middle of August, there was a review of the season conducted in Galway’s centre in Loughgeorge. Everyone amongst players and management, barring Paul Conroy and goalkeeping coach Ray Galligan, were there.
Nobody shouted. Nobody raged. There wasn’t the remotest chance of a slap being thrown in frustration of another year that came and gone, while they watched Mayo swinging from the chandeliers after their Sam Maguire triumph.
It was reported that players tentatively suggested space for some more dynamic phases of play, but it was being discussed in a very abstract way.
In the end, Joyce was there doing a lot of listening and not a lot of talking. Asked at the meeting if he would continue in charge, he neither confirmed nor denied.
But last Thursday, nobody broke the news. Joyce left the job on his own terms. He leaves them as contenders. He put all of himself into it.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Close
Comments
This is YOUR comments community. Stay civil, stay constructive, stay on topic.
Please familiarise yourself with our comments policy
here
before taking part.
Pádraic Joyce gave 22 years in senior roles to Galway - he couldn't have given any more
MANY INTERCOUNTY PLAYERS, coaches and managers never tire of giving themselves a big old lick from the tips of their toes to the balding crowns when it comes to publicly proclaiming and praising the ‘culture and values’ within ‘the group.’
What this might entail will be set out by 30-odd players and 20-odd coaching, management and backroom staff in a hotel room or county training ground breakout room at some early point of a season.
Flip-charts will be used. Suggestions will be open from the floor. Some lads will be earnestly mad into it, peppering the lad with the felt-tip pen with suggestions, swept away in a feeling of evangelistic fervour.
By the end of the exercise, a team has a set of mottos, targets, expectations and a general code of how to behave towards each other, with respect and unwavering support.
And that’s all well and good, right up to the point where you have to live it.
Pádraic Joyce’s big test came around the time of this year’s Connacht final when his full-back Seán Fitzgerald received notification that he had been accepted as a contestant on the television series Love Island, an experiment in calorie deficit dry-humping and enforced gossiping.
They had beaten Leitrim in a Connacht semi-final, but the performance was patchy and their lack of dominance of possession had to have been a worry.
Then, they unexpectedly lost to Roscommon in the decider. In the hotel afterwards, Joyce gathered his players around him and said that Fitzpatrick had some news.
Unorthodox news, for sure. And after making some jokes about it, Fitzpatrick claims Joyce said, “We’re going to back Fitzy 100 per cent.”
All of that is measured. It’s seeing the player as the person. It’s mature and respectful and all of that. Joyce lived some seriously high values at that moment. He met the moment.
But…here comes the bit in the middle of the LinkedIn post that flips the logic on its head.
It’s also absolutely mad.
Laughing after a provincial final loss?
After losing your full-back because of television obligations?
Let’s re-imagine it a small bit. Picture Dalo telling Ger Loughnane he was leaving the Clare panel in 1995 to try his luck handing out flyers for free shots outside an Ibiza nightclub?
What kind of reception, do you imagine, Jarly Óg Burns might have got in 2024 if he’d told Kieran McGeeney that winning an All-Ireland would be all well and good, but had he ever played spin the bottle?
Pádraic Joyce may have been entirely reasonable at this moment. A proper human.
But to affect change, you need to be an unreasonable man. A heretic. A lunatic. A completely irrational header, an angry tyrant. Whatever it takes.
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world,” said Templeogue Synge Street clubman, George Bernard Shaw.
“The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
***
Reasonable
Perhaps he became more reasonable with age. There was a time when he seemed less so.
In Ciarán Murphy’s first-person account of being a Galway club footballer at a certain level in ‘This Is The Life’, he recalled his various fleeting glimpses and encounters of the generation that won the ’98 and ’01 All-Irelands.
There was no doubt that Joyce was the alpha male and the ultimate clubman.
‘He was genuinely mindbogglingly good for fifteen years with Killererin,’ wrote Murphy.
Recounting how Tuam Stadium would be a focal point for staging entire weekends of club championship action, he recalled how there would be gangs of lads standing on the banks from various clubs after having played, or waiting to play a game.
‘And the giant figure at the centre of that broad circle was, of course, Joyce. He loved football so much, and lived for it so completely that he was barely ever a dispassionate viewer. And if players made mistakes he could be devastatingly cutting. I never thought he rated me as a player, but at least I knew that I was far from alone.’
***
Retirement
“I can’t go on playing forever,” said Pádraic Joyce on 14 July 2012.
He was 35 and he was after making a substitute appearance in Galway’s one-point round 2 qualifier defeat to Antrim in Casement Park (ask your parents).
His playing career wasn’t exactly a tale of riches to rags, but the beginning and end bear stark contrast given he came on board just in time for the 1998 All-Ireland win.
By that stage, Matthew Clancy and Joe Bergin had both left the panel earlier in the year. Joyce was the only man left standing from the 2001 All-Ireland.
He had 15 years as a player. Seven as a manager. 22 years of a 49-year-old life.
So maybe it’s time to move on.
Or maybe it’s not, as he leaves the easel with some details of his masterpiece unfinished, like an AI clip that looks kosher until you notice someone is missing an arm.
In previous generations, seven years would have been seen as a fair old stint and, if the ultimate honours were not delivered in that time, definitely the right time to say farewell.
Only one man has bucked that trend and the McGeeney Factor – winning Sam Maguire in his tenth season – created a new layer of thought that county boards were better to stick with experience.
Long Haul
His former International Rules teammate Joyce appeared to be set for the long haul with Galway after defeat to Dublin in this year’s All-Ireland quarter-final, pointing out he had an arrangement to stay until the end of the 2028 season.
Along with an athletic midfield of Paul Conroy, John Maher, big leggy yokes like Matthew Tierney, Peter Cooke and Seán Kelly, creative defenders like John Daly and Kieran Molloy, and eventually, exhaustingly, it would all fall into place.
But Comer would get injured, Walsh would get injured. Others went travelling and Cooke was working abroad. They came close against Kerry in a classic final in 2022, and calved in a grind of a final two years later against Armagh.
Successive quarter-final losses to Meath and Dublin – especially the second when they were ahead going down the stretch – made it feel like they were circling a drain, even allowing for a four-in-a-row domination of Connacht.
Throughout all of that, Joyce displayed remarkable diplomacy. He never went groping for excuses like others. He never protected his own ego or deflected from the truth.
Review
In the middle of August, there was a review of the season conducted in Galway’s centre in Loughgeorge. Everyone amongst players and management, barring Paul Conroy and goalkeeping coach Ray Galligan, were there.
Nobody shouted. Nobody raged. There wasn’t the remotest chance of a slap being thrown in frustration of another year that came and gone, while they watched Mayo swinging from the chandeliers after their Sam Maguire triumph.
It was reported that players tentatively suggested space for some more dynamic phases of play, but it was being discussed in a very abstract way.
In the end, Joyce was there doing a lot of listening and not a lot of talking. Asked at the meeting if he would continue in charge, he neither confirmed nor denied.
But last Thursday, nobody broke the news. Joyce left the job on his own terms. He leaves them as contenders. He put all of himself into it.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
GAA Gaelic Football Galway Galway Leader Joyce Joyce country