The ever-observant Man from Mars would have been surprised by the line-up for this week’s PwC GAA-GPA player of the month awards for July and August.
He might have drawn conclusions about All-Irelands from the number of Galway winners – four out of six – and that intuition wouldn’t have been that the county had become only the second to lose three finals in a year.
Paul Conroy’s team lost the men’s football final to Armagh. Dervla Higgins and Aoife Donohue were on the camogie team that was headed off by Cork and Nicola Ward’s footballers bit the dust against Kerry.
Ward joked about how the photocall for this community of abjection had triggered some bleak humour.
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“We were slagging each other. Myself, Paul and Dervla. There’s Ailbhe [Clancy] here from Leitrim, who won the intermediate so we were asking her for a few tips.
“It’s been a difficult few weeks for Galway with the supporters having a path worn to Croke Park.”
Levity aside, she hasn’t shirked the necessary analysis and mentions in passing that, in an impressive display of fortitude, the match video has already been watched three times.
“Getting back to reality and back to work,” she says of the days since.
“It was disappointing to lose. Nobody expected us to get that far and when you exceed expectations to get to the final, all you want to do is put in a big performance. Unfortunately, on the day, a few too many things went wrong for us and we fell short against a super Kerry side. It’s been tough.”
Nicola Ward is young, at 27, for someone with so much experience – a decade in the county jersey – and is well versed in the ups and downs of representing Galway. If there is a theme to her collective self-analysis, it is inconsistency and the team’s difficulty in following one great performance with another.
Talking about the season’s signature display, deposing All-Ireland champions Dublin in their Donnycarney back yard when she merited the Player of the Match citation, she is nonetheless encouraged by how Galway kept going for the All-Ireland semi-final.
“It was a very hard battle and not just over 60 minutes. It went to 80 after extra time and that takes its toll on the body. We did though back up our performance against Cork. As I said, we can be inconsistent and go out and beat the world one day and then fall short the next.”
The final was the day the wheels came off, an unpleasant contemplation for a player so used to excelling as a free-moving centre back and accumulating both individual honours, like this week’s, and a stellar record with her club Kilkerrin-Clonberne, current three-in-a-row All-Ireland champions.
“It wasn’t nice at all,” she says of the inter-county final earlier in August.
“The first 20 minutes it was 3-2 and we were with them and had a lot of possession but didn’t get the scores. To have a chance we needed one or two of the Kerry forwards to be off-form but they were on fire. The goal before half-time was a killer.
“There’s a big difference between being five and eight points down. You could say that, realistically, the game was over at half-time. You’re chasing the game after that and getting pulled out of position and are more open at the back. I don’t think we were 12 points the worse team and it was very disappointing not to have showcased what you’re about.”
It was a second final defeat for several of the team, including Ward, who played in the narrow 2019 final defeat by Dublin in monsoon conditions. Both matches featured a goal just before half-time that in each case was fatal to Galway’s prospects.
It was suggested afterwards that Kerry’s success after a long, barren spell and a couple of contemporary setbacks could be Galway’s lodestar. She agrees.
“My club, Kilkerrin-Clonberne lost four semi-finals and a final before we won one. Once you break those barriers, like Kerry did, year on year you keep learning and taking the experience with you. Some day we will get there and Kerry are an example.”
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