WHEN he was a lad, Shane Walsh dreamt of moments like he had last Saturday.
Standing over the ball in the dying seconds with the chance to win the game for Galway .
He had the final kick against Armagh at Breffni Park.
A look at the posts, a look at the ball, one, two, three steps…
YAAAAASSSSS!
Over she goes.
At half-time last Saturday evening, Galway were gone.
They were eight points down against Armagh in Cavan, while Derry and Dublin were level in Newry.
If it had stayed like that the game was lost, the group was lost and the campaign was over so whatever was left in Galway’s locker needed to come out there and then.
Thankfully for the sake of Walsh and the Tribesmen, it did.
With that free they beat the All-Ireland champions and lived to fight another day – Sunday to be exact, against Down in Newry.
So, what was going through his mind when he stood over that crucial free?
“Probably three different things,” says Walsh.
“Firstly, when you’re walking over, be calm.
“You’re just saying: ‘This is my job now, the rest of them have done their work to win the free.’
“Then there’s a few words coming your way from the opposition and then the heart rate starts to go up a bit.
“Then you’re thinking about how you’ve dreamt of this as a young lad, this is what you grew up dreaming about, saying you want to be in these situations.
“And then just commit to the kick and be yourself. That’s all I could do and thankfully, it went over.”
Galway will hope that score will be the start of a run of form for their talisman. After missing the entire Connacht Championship with injury, Walsh struggled to find his best form in the games against Dublin and Derry and explained how it had taken some reassurance from his team-mates to restore his confidence and self-belief.
“As a forward when you’re coming back from an injury in the middle of a year, it can be hard because you’re chasing it,” he explained.
“The lads are moving at a certain level, there’s a certain synchronisation that they have out on the pitch and you’re trying to get to the that as well so it’s tough going.
“You’re probably taking shots that you normally would score, you’d feel, but they’re not coming off for you maybe because you haven’t had that repetition, or you haven’t had that time that the rest of them have had.
“That can knock you and you can go into your shell a bit. I definitely felt that I gone into my shell in the Dublin game and the Derry game. I hadn’t done a whole pile in the last 10 or 11 weeks and there I was in Championship football trying to get something out of myself.
“When shots aren’t coming off for you, you say to yourself: ‘I mightn’t take that on again’ and that’s probably the worst thing for me and for the team because they’re looking to you to take on the shots.
“After the Derry game we all sat down and had a chat. It was just great to have that backing of the lads in the dressingroom to say to me: ‘We back you no matter what so remember that when you were taking those chances’.
“They were saying: ‘It’s not a good thing for us if you’re on the field and you’re not taking shots’. That’s my role in the team along with a few of the other lads.
“Getting that support meant a lot and obviously having Padraic there as well, having one-to-one meetings with him. I had trained well for the two weeks and it paid off last Saturday.”
WALSH was mobbed by his delighted team-mates after the ball went over the Armagh bar.
The win meant they survived and Armagh (who were already through to the quarter-finals) were beaten in 70 minutes for the first time in two years in the Championship.
Yes, it meant a lot but Galway weren’t more motivated for that game than they others in the group, says Walsh.
“The build-up probably wasn’t a whole lot different than with Dublin and Derry,” he explained.
“Dublin, Derry, Armagh… Pick who you want to play there, you probably don’t want to pick any of them. Every game took on a life of its own, I suppose. Dublin were coming off losing to Meath for the first time in 15 years and we got the backlash of that.
“Derry hadn’t won a game in 12 months and they literally threw the kitchen sink at us and we just about survived that.
“Then you have Armagh who won the All-Ireland last year and we’ve had really tough battles with them. Coming into the game, there’s always an edge there. The last couple of years of playing with him, there’s always been that edge and it’s a brilliant edge.
“What a game to have, no more in ourselves and Mayo.
“There’s that rivalry building up because both of us are competing at the right end of the Championship.”
AFTER the dramatic win in Cavan, Galway manager Padraic Joyce said his star forward’s match-winning contribution had been “a long time coming”.
Far from taking his manager’s words as a personal attack, Walsh enjoys the straight-up personality of Joyce and says the outside world sees a different side of the former Galway Allstar to the one the players know.
“We’d nearly be laughing and joking about some of the things he keeps saying about us to the media,” said Walsh.
“We know where he’s coming from and it’s not as if we’d be saying that’s a personal attack or anything like that.
“I wouldn’t say we’re immune to it, he is the gaffer and we listen to what he says. We know where he’s coming from and he has Galway’s best interests at heart. He bleeds maroon and white all day long and he always has a few interesting things to say to us which give us a crack of a smile.
“I think his best one is: ‘You can boil an egg in five minutes but you can score a goal in one’. Take of that what you want.”
Joyce propelled Galway to the Sam Maguire in 1998 and 2001 as a player. Now in his sixth season as manager he has taken his native county to All-Ireland finals in 2022 and last year and Walsh says the Killererin clubman’s experience shone through in the dressing room when the chips were down at half-time last Saturday evening.
“In his first year or two, he probably would have come in like the cat among the pigeons,” said Walsh.
“Whereas on Saturday he came in really composed and spoke clearly about what he wanted us to do in the second half and what we weren’t doing as well.
“Then he really just got behind us to encourage us. He gets a few things across and then the rest was just about bringing belief and confidence into the group.
“He’s been doing that in particular since the Derry game, it’s been really showing through because we felt the two games that we played we weren’t getting to a level and confidence wasn’t high.
“He was constantly reminding us how good we can be and how we need to get to that level. I suppose that kind of just poured through in us in the second half then.”
GALWAY began this season by beating All-Ireland champions Armagh in the League and finished a comfortable third in Division One just a point behind eventual champions Kerry.
They completed a four in-a-row by beating Mayo in this year’s Connacht Championship final but their form since – losing to Dublin and drawing with Derry - had been a disappointment until their second half rally against Armagh when goals from John Maher and Matthew Tierney set up that dramatic finish.
Walsh is confident that there’s better to come from the Tribesmen.
“It’s game by game at this stage,” he said.
“Obviously, we just want to bring our best every day we go out. Have we brought our best so far? I don’t believe so, but it has been hard I suppose.
“We’ve had a bit of a broken spell with players missing so that obviously affects the rhythm of the group too. We are getting there, the second half the last day against Armagh was our best football to date.
“So, if we can take a leaf out of that book and bring that forward we’ll be happy. You know you’re not going to have 70 minutes of absolutely blitzing a team, so you have to be able to control their proper patches and be able to excel in your own.”
Defeat last Saturday and finishing bottom of the group (albeit a thoroughbred one) would have been a hammerblow for the Tribesmen who began this Championship among the favourites for the Sam Maguire.
It might even had been the end of the road for some of them.
They haven’t looked like All-Ireland contenders, nevermind champions, yet but new faces like Matthew Thompson have added to the quality that is in the panel. If they find their best form then Galway will certainly be in the mix.
“You build confidence through yourself but you also build it through your teammates, your manager and the people around you,” says Walsh.
“If people are knocking you it obviously doesn’t encourage you. We were harsh on ourselves after the two games we played in the group and we felt things maybe weren’t going as well as we’d have liked.
“It can be quite cynical but the last two weeks we’ve been quite positive to each other and responded to the tasks that were coming. A big thing for me was knowing I had the backing of my team-mates going into a game (against Armagh) when all our careers were on the line.
“Now we have Down and they’re probably the most in-form team out there. Even in the Donegal game, they were unlucky with a lot of goal chances they had and you see the way they’ve been building since the League.
“They’re a completely different proposition. You never get anything easy up there and we’re fully aware Conor Laverty always has his teams well-drilled.
“No more than the group we had with Dublin, Derry and Armagh, having Down is another unbelievable challenge and, if you get through it, there’s no better way to build your confidence, build the belief in the team and build momentum.”
