Kilkenny v Galway: Tom Humphries talks to three Galway legends about a fine team and the black-and-amber obstacle that stood between them and the holy grail.

You think it's bad now? You are depressed at the thought of nothing but Rebels and Cats lining the road behind and paving the country ahead?

Well, sample that period of the 1970s when Tipp were in recession and Clare were more of a hard-luck story than ever they were last weekend. Back then Kilkenny did two in a row and then Cork enjoyed a three in a row and finally Kilkenny came back to win the last All-Ireland of the decade - more out of mere habit than anything else, because Cork had messed up.

Cork and Kilkenny. One or other of them was in every final through the decade. If Kilkenny ebbed, well Cork flowed and vice versa. Tipp mysteriously evaporated after 1971. Loveable underdogs came and went. Limerick wrung an All-Ireland from their 15 minutes of fame. No such luck for Clare or Wexford. Then there was Galway.

Through the 1970s when Galway came knocking, nay seriously pounding, Cork (although they had assembled hurling's last three-in-a row side) held the door open a couple of times. Kilkenny though resisted as dispassionately as nightclub bouncers. By the end of the decade the measure of Galway's progress was that they had been 27 points adrift of the Cats in 1972 and just seven points off the pace by 1979.

In between though Kilkenny would have scored 15 goals and 114 points in just five games, and that against a Galway half-back line which would be legendary and confettied with All Stars.

Subsequent generations would have no truck with any black-and-amber voodoo but in the decade of the arms trial and Jack Lynch and the oil strikes and frosty winters of general discontent Galway found Kilkenny's hand upon their chest five times. And where do you chaps think you're going?

It was a cruel but not unusual business. Galway were assembling the side which would announce the subsequent decade with rousing song about the West being awake. In the '80s Offaly learned how to push back and by 1987 Conor Hayes's Galway team had seen enough to know they could push back too. That was later though. In the '70s just when things started going right in Galway hurling it was Kilkenny who kept making things go wrong.

You could count 1972, after all it was an All-Ireland semi-final and Kilkenny were honed on two epic games with Wexford in a replayed Leinster final. You could count it but nobody else does really, except perhaps the curator of the museum of Eddie Keher moments. Eddie scored 17 points that day, 10 from play. Kilkenny 5-28, Galway 3-7.

Best though to skim over the following summer when Galway avoided an All-Ireland semi-final by managing just four points against London. Ho hum.

Galway were coming out of a dark and desolate valley period. Having been gifted a bye to the All-Ireland final of 1958, they lost badly to Tipp and, all a-fluster, agreed to go into the Munster championship to harden themselves up. Their 11-year incarceration brought a single win, over Clare, and much mourning and weeping.

When they hit bottom though, they planted some seeds. Little things began stirring in the stony earth in the early '70s. So many lines about to intersect. So many gambles about to pay off. In the mid 1960s Galway had started an odd but worthwhile initiative called Coiste Iomána whereby novice hurlers went to Coláiste Connachta in An Spidéal for six weeks of each summer. In the austere college they immersed themselves in Irish for the mornings and out on the grass in hurling for the rest of the day.

In Gormanstown in 1969 Joe Lennon's legendary coaching courses opened up a hurling counterpart. Father Tommy Maher and Donie Neylon were the resident professors. Galway sent battalions of coaches to listen and learn.

The quality of hurling and coaching was disseminated through the clubs and then distilled again in the county teams. Galway reached a minor All-Ireland final in 1970 and won an under-21 All-Ireland two years later.

Other stuff too. In New York the hurling scene around the Galway club had been especially strong in the late '60s and early '70s. Then John Connolly and Pádraig Fahy came home and threw in their lot for the summers.

"And at the time," recalls SeáSilke, the legendary centre back, "the universities were allowed to play a team in the Railway Cup. We would have had a few fellas at that level. We got to know and play against guys from the traditional hurling counties and their aura was diminished for us."

His education there brought him into direct contact with Iggy Clarke, the young seminarian. They would form two-thirds of the greatest half-back line of the decade.

"It was just a good place to learn hurling. We had Seán Stack from Clare, the two Fitzmaurices of Limerick, who played against us in the 1980 final. There was Paddy Barry from Cork. Andy Fenton. Joe and Iggy Clarke. There was Ollie Perkins of Tipp. Two O'Driscolls from Cork, who were fine hurlers. Joe Condon from Limerick. All very good hurlers. Henry Gough from Wexford, who won a league medal. We had a lot of good players and Father Maher and Liam Ryan in Maynooth were big-time on the hurling. There was a strong scene in NUIG at the time. We'd have played against Joe McDonagh, Joe Connolly, Frank Burke and a few of the other lads . . . it seeped through."

And then Inky Flaherty came along, beloved and experienced and redolent of slightly better days in the maroon. Galway were a serious team before anybody noticed.

In 1974 they flew Seán Silke home from a working summer in Chicago to play in an All-Ireland semi-final against Kilkenny in Birr. The late John D Hickey wrote that Silke looked "all at sea". The description was fair enough but Silke remembers the emotional difficulty he had in going back. Having been around the panel since 1971 he recalls flying home with a certain amount of optimism.

"We lost by about 12 points and I think I marked Mick Crotty that day but we had a sense that there was a team coming together."

So it proved.

Iggy Clarke, a graduate of the under-21 championship-winning side, had started senior duty in the league in the dank winter of 1972. Joe McDonagh had come from that same under-21 squad. By 1974 the famous half-back line was coalescing.

"I don't know when our first game would have been together. It was probably 1974 against Kilkenny. They gave us a bit of a hiding but we played well in the first half. It was our first real taste of senior championship. That was the first game I remember as a half-back line together. We were a bit overawed. Nobody rated us.

"The three of us came together out in the centre of the field and promised each other that whatever we did we wouldn't let these fellas run around us. We tried to dovetail a bit, cover for each other. It was born out of that we were young coming on to the senior team and our senior team was insignificant compared to the other senior teams."

Galway were making strides but it was hard to persuade the laity.

"People in the county didn't rate us," says Clarke. "I'd come off the under-21 side and we'd won Fitzgibbons at Maynooth. I can remember thinking very definitely that it was a load of rubbish all this stuff about certain counties being unbeatable. I had the sense we could overturn that sort of negative thinking. And we did. Except against Kilkenny."

The year 1975 would be a breakthrough of sorts. Playing from the old Division One B, Galway escaped. They surprised Cork in a quarter-final. Kilkenny, just back from a US tour as All-Ireland champions, surrendered listlessly in Thurles, and 32,000 turned out to see Galway beat Tipp in the league final. Tipp were starving by then themselves and nobody thought too much about it.

Except in Galway.

"That summer we beat Cork in a tremendous All-Ireland semi-final," says Clarke. "Great open hurling. Cork had that nice open style, still have to an extent, and that made them a little vulnerable."

Itwas Frank Burke who set the tone in 1975 with a 20-yard solo run and a characteristic thumper of a goal. John Connolly followed up with a better one. And PJ Qualter topped the pair of them. Three goals in the opening nine minutes. Galway were two-thirds of way across the tightrope before they thought to look down.

That All-Ireland semi-final, one of the great matches of the era, saw the definitive arrival of Galway. Silke rates it as the best performance by the half-back line who would usher the county through the decade.

"In the league semi-final against Kilkenny I thought we played exceptional and then in that championship game against Cork it just all went well."

Well enough that Willie Walsh had to be switched off Silke that afternoon.

The final brought Galway back into Kilkenny's orbit. Suddenly the Westerners were big time.

"I remember there was a reception in Galway after the league final that year," says Clarke, "and there were so many people out on the streets. There were old people crying. We had this sense then of what it would be like if we won an All-Ireland."

Galway's average age was 24. Kilkenny were backboned by men with three or four All-Irelands in their pockets.

"When we'd beaten them in the league that year," says Frank Burke, "they hadn't done their training and they were just back from America. I think they just knew they'd haul us back once they had their championship sharpness. And ourselves? Every one of us would have been photographed on the farm or blocklaying or doing whatever in the run-up to the final. To pick up a Sunday paper and to see your photo in the middle of the article, well sure it blew us away a little.

"Part of the final is a blur. We were well trained and fit but once we hit the sound of the crowd, well for a lot of us it just passed over our heads. I got three nice balls in the first half, ran through the half-back line and put the three of them wide. I didn't remember any of it till I saw it on telly later."

Clarke, no man to give psychological sway to Kilkenny in terms of skill or tradition, can't help himself though when he recites the litany of names from 1975.

"They gave us a bit of a lesson and when you think about it, Noel Skehan, Pat Henderson, Eddie Keher, Brian Cody, Chunky O'Brien, Kieran Purcell, Pat Delaney, Mick Crotty, Fan Larkin, Billy Fitz. My God, we should have seen it coming."

Perhaps that Galway side were always a shade unlucky. In their two final appearances of the decade they cleared their throats by beating Cork along the way. Thus they never caught Kilkenny napping.

"I think," says Silke, "that the thing with Kilkenny was we were always over-respectful. If they played badly against us, we'd play worse. They created a certain mystique and we were too reverend. They were powerful. We'd lost in 1975 before we knew where we were. We were unfortunate to lose in 1979 but we always came up short against them."

The sides met twice more in the seventies. The semi-final of 1978 and the final of 1979 were notable only for the sameness of the margin (seven points) in both games. In the 1978 game Frank Burke got away from Henderson to score the goal of the season but that was the best by way of consolation Galway took away from it.

A year later on a bad day in September Kilkenny won All-Ireland by rote. They beat Galway not because they were better or even because Galway believed they were better. They beat them because they just knew they would win. They made fewer mistakes. Galway let in a couple of soft goals. The decade was done.

"1979 was an All-Ireland we let slip," says Clarke. "We were as good as them at that stage. Again though we had a great semi-final against Cork. We were hurling well but they got one soft goal and it turned the tide on us. We weren't able to recover. It knocked our spirit. We never really recovered. We were good enough to win but we didn't." Same old, same old.

As happenstance would have it, Seán Silke was on Billy Fitzpatrick that day. It broke well for Frank Burke. The All Star nominations then were announced before the finals. Billy Fitz and Burke were contenders for the centre-forward spot. Silke outhurled Billy Fitz and the Kilkenny man was moved. Burke was given a rough time by Henderson but with fewer options Galway left him there longer. He reckons it tipped him an All Star that year.

Twelve months later the irony was that Galway would be missing two-thirds of their best line when they made the breakthrough. McDonagh and Clarke would watch from the stands.

"1979 seemed like the end," says Burke, "but as we say here, then the Pope came to Ballybrit, Castlegar won the county title and went on and took the club All-Ireland, we won the Railway Cup. New year, new life. And Offaly did the dirty work in Leinster by knocking out Kilkenny. Limerick took out Cork. We faced Offaly and then Limerick. Psychologically we believed at last."

The West was awake and after a decade of suffering at the hands of Kilkenny they stopped being afraid. Well just about.

"Kilkenny is different," says Burke. "They've won seven times as many all-Irelands as we have. In Galway we talk a lot about hurling but in Kilkenny the tradition runs deep. . . I remember being down there and old hurling men would bring me down in some place like Mooncoin to the local graveyard and you'd walk along a bit and you'd have passed 40 or 50 All-Ireland medals to your left and the same again to your right. In Galway we'd be doing well to name the 1923 team."