Darren Morrissey outlines hunger in Galway’s ranks ahead of Leinster final battle
GALWAY senior hurling captain Darren Morrissey said it a great honour to captain his county in a Leinster final this weekend.
“It’s obviously a huge honour for me and my family and the club. It’s probably something that you want to do when you’re a young lad and you start out hurling one day, lead out your county team in any game. But to lead them out in a Leinster final is really special,” Morrissey told Tribune Sport.
The Sarsfields clubman has been able to put injuries struggles behind him this season and get a consistent run of games in the Galway jersey.
“We are very hungry now, I’m here seven years now and we haven’t won anything and there’s an awful lot of lads in that bracket as well. So yeah, we’re now this year and we don’t want to let this one pass so we’re really looking forward to it.
“We probably let ourselves down in our performances in the last few years and I think the team is really hungry now to get another Leinster medal. There’s an awful lot of lads in there that don’t have medals and hopefully that will change next week.”
Reflecting on Galway’s defeat to Dublin during the round-robin series, Morrissey admitted that Donoghue's side took a number of learnings from that loss.
“Dublin are probably the in-form team at the moment, they’re unbeaten in the round-robin series and they gave us a fair game there a few weeks ago and they’re well able to mix it with their game plan as well.
“You saw the last day when we played Dublin. They brought on John Hetherton and Ronan Hayes, it was chaos there for five or ten minutes wondering who was going to pick them up. They were raining ball down on top of us.”
Morrissey welcomes the challenge of man marking the top players in the country.
“You are going to have players that you have to man mark and track down and try and curb their influence in a game.
“I suppose, I’m probably seen as a man marker myself. I look forward to marking the best forwards in the country. It’s great to be given the chance to do that, wherever I’m told to go, I pick up and try to do my best on them anyways.”