The Maroon explosion!

Dara Bradley

GALWAY: Leinster senior hurling champions, 2012. Are you over the shock of it yet? It’s a few days on from Galway’s historic, incredible feat at Croke Park on Sunday and even now it hasn’t fully sunk in.

It’s not so much the win that shocked. In the build-up, even if they were given no hope by the majority inside and outside of the county, there was always a vague possibility of springing an upset and winning; the 2001 and 2005 defeats of Kilkenny proved Galway can raise their game and are a bit of a bogey team for the Cats every so often.

But it was the emphatic nature of the win and the ruthless manner in which the highly effective game plan was executed, the fact that Galway completely dominated one of hurling’s all time greatest teams, which took everybody by surprise. Not least Kilkenny.

Right from the get-go Galway set out their stall. Galway set the intensity levels, Galway set the pace, Galway raised the physicality levels, Galway dictated everything.

In the All-Ireland final two Septembers ago, the winners, Tipperary, did likewise and exposed a few chinks in Kilkenny’s armour in halting their ‘drive for five’.

But for such a relatively young Galway team and new management, in their first year in charge attempting to rebuild after a series of championship disappointments, to produce such a stunning, complete, all-round game of hurling was incredible.

Galway did to Kilkenny what Kilkenny have done to Galway and virtually every other team they’ve faced over the past decade – remarkably, they out-‘Kilkennyed’ Kilkenny. The Tribesmen completely wiped out Kilkenny; and when they had them on the ropes, they were unrelenting, upped the pressure another level and hit them again.

The whole 70 minutes plus was surreal but the first-half in particular was unbelievable stuff. Where did that performance come from? In the league earlier this year, Kilkenny won the day with 25 points to spare; so for Galway to totally outplay the Cats – hammer them, in fact – and emerge with a ten point victory, 2-21 to 2-11, is a seismic reversal.

The attitude was spot-on. The maroon and white rattled Kilkenny with a first-half tsunami of fierce intensity and controlled aggression, the likes of which the All-Ireland champions have rarely experienced.

Galway tore into them with bone-crunching tackles, 15 Tasmanian Devils whizzing round the Croke Park pitch, hunting their prey in packs, hooking and harrying, throwing their bodies on the line, smothering the Kilkenny men into submission. Kilkenny don’t like it up ‘em, and it showed.

Kilkenny manager Brian Cody would have been forgiven for applying for restraining orders to protect his charges such was the intense level of harassment applied to them by the Galway players. There really was no let-up.

Anthony Cunningham’s men needed to start well, but this was fairytale stuff: 1-2 to no score up after four minutes, 1-6 to no score up after 17 minutes, 2-11 to 0-1, a 16 points lead, after 29 minutes. You couldn’t make it up. The Tribesmen were on-fire, unstoppable. Kilkenny were stunned.

Gunning for their eighth provincial title on the trot, the out-of-sorts reigning Leinster champion’s first score came after 19 and a half minutes, a free; their next score, their first and only white flag from play in the opening half, came on 30 minutes, and they went in at the break with a tally of just four points to Galway’s 2-12. Incredible – that must be a record in the Cody era.

For more, read this week's Galway City Tribune.