THE BUSIEST man at yesterday’s launch of the Allianz Hurling League in Croke Park had to have been Anthony Cunningham.

The new Galway manager is on countdown to his first league fixture against Dublin next Sunday, but last weekend he led two other teams to national finals.

On Saturday Westmeath and Leinster football champions Garrycastle sprang a surprise on their cross-Shannon neighbours St Brigid’s to reach next month’s All-Ireland club final for the first time. A day later he was on the line as the Connacht hurlers reached the interprovincial final by defeating Ulster. Although his football management career has in all likelihood just one match to run for the foreseeable future, Cunningham – who took his local club, ironically St Brigid’s, to a Connacht football title – feels the big-ball game has its applications in hurling.

“I suppose it’s just the intensity of hurling has really gone up. There’s quite a lot of tackles now in hurling, a lot of hits and the game has changed a bit. It used to be far more direct – it’s probably more combination play now to a degree. So there’d be parts of that that have come from football.

“Hurling as well has got up to the level of football fitness which I’d say, five years ago, was probably ahead of hurling. Now

it could even be the other way around. The management of teams, panels, schedules, physio, medical and all of that is all common really. But team preparation is quite common.”

For all his pioneering work in football, Cunningham’s pedigree is more familiar in hurling as an All-Ireland winning captain at minor and under-21 level in 1983 and ’86 and a double senior medallist when Galway last won the MacCarthy Cup in 1987 and ’88. Last year, he managed the county’s under-21s to the All-Ireland. But it’s likely the challenge he’s just taken on will prove the steepest.

Despite running second only to Kilkenny in their haul of under-age silverware, Galway haven’t featured on the senior roll of honour for nearly quarter of a century.

“There’s always huge expectation in Galway. We’ve had a lot of underage success and that piles on additional pressure, lads are wondering where all these players have gone. The challenge is to get these guys to develop to a higher level, to senior level.

“Some of the players won at underage, but didn’t push on with their own development to get to the next level – you don’t just walk off now from a minor and under-21 panel straight into senior, you see the great Kilkenny players and they probably don’t get to the senior team until they’re 22 or 23, Richie Hogan being a case in point, the Fennellys likewise. It takes time to develop physically, it also takes time to develop your game. I think Galway lost a lot of guys over the years in failing to do that. There was a lot of player turnover, a lot of management turnover. Then you had some who maybe lacked a bit of pace, or a bit of size – a combination of many factors. But, hopefully, that’s behind us now.”

His successful under-21s were noticeable for being of more formidable physical build than normally associated with the county’s under-age teams.

“Now you need a very physical and tall half-forward line and you need a strong half-back line so yes, you’d have been looking for that type of player. The aerial battle and being able to win that – it’s one thing being able to do that at under-21 and another taking it to the next level. You don’t realise until you come across it first hand the Kilkenny players and how good they are in the air or how strong Tipperary are in the air. In certain quarters you need your height, athleticism and physicality.”