On a baking hot Monday morning Tom Lally sits in the old stand at Eamonn Deacy Park to talk sport. It is always an education. As a goalkeeper and coach Lally’s decades involvement in Galway football affords him talismanic status.
During his stint with Glasgow Celtic his holiday return home would provide great excitement Corribside. Penalty shootout opportunities at the Plots remain a vivid and cherished memory for many.
Significant lessons were learned by Lally in Scotland. Ultimately the knowledge acquired assisted him throughout his career as a player and coach: high standards mattered. “When I went to Celtic Football I always remembered on a Wednesday in the training sessions, we’d arrive at Barrowfields, the old training ground, they have moved from there since,” Lally recalls.
“The game would be 11 v 11, plus substitutions. It would be one touch, two touch, three touch, 20 minute segments. Obviously the players whoever they may be at any level have got to have a good first touch, have good awareness, and be able to pass the ball accurately.
“These are the three criteria required at any level, whether it is junior, juvenile or professional – control, awareness, passing – and obviously good intelligent movement off the ball. All these factors were there in front of me when I went to Celtic Football Club.
“There was no sloppiness, there was no sloppiness allowed. The manager was a very strong, volatile, strict disciplinarian, the late Jock Stein, fully supported by the late Seán Fallon from Sligo. They were a great team – no nonsense people, the players responded accordingly.”
Lally returned to the League of Ireland with St Patrick’s Athletic and Athlone Town before Galway Rovers entered at the highest grade in this country in 1977.
“When Galway Rovers got into the league I saw an opportunity to perhaps come to represent my own city and county at that level,” Lally says.
“I think it was very important. Everywhere I ever was or travelled to for a game in the country, they would always say to me how come Galway hasn’t got a team in the League of Ireland. When that occurred the people at Galway Rovers, the courageous people that took on the task of entering into the league, they deserve an awful lot of credit for it.”
Suddenly footballers in Galway could aspire to playing at the highest level domestically. “Of course the players within the junior scene that responded to the call of the various managers, they came in, they had the courage to go to play and represent our city and county at the level of League of Ireland,” Lally adds.
“It was a fantastic effort on everyone’s part to have done that. In later seasons then when it became a little bit more difficult, the late Martin Greaney and Joe Hanley came in as directors and formed Galway United Football Club. There was many successful years under their stewardship.
“They deserve a huge amount of credit too, it isn’t an easy task, running a League of Ireland club is an expensive venture and they came in, they put their money where their mouth was. That was the year we qualified for Europe for the first time, it was a fantastic achievement on everyone’s part.”
The landscape has altered dramatically in the intervening years. Now young girls and boys from the locality can develop in the national underage leagues: opportunities exist.
“When I was growing up in Galway in the underage environment you only had about four or five juvenile teams and of course the ban existed,” Lally states.
“If you were caught playing soccer automatically you were banned from playing your native sport Gaelic Football or hurling. I actually found myself in that position at one stage when I was playing with Fr Griffins.
“I turned up for a minor match one night, I was left behind at the Imperial Hotel. Eventually I was told because I had played a soccer match the week before, someone had reported me. I was then suspended by the club at that time.
“My early memories of playing underage football, I actually played outfield for Galway Bohemians in an U15 game in the Sportsground against Our Lady’s Boys Club. I played outfield, I actually scored three goals on the day. So they gave me a nickname at that time, they called me hat-trick Lally. That is maybe why I went back into the goals to get out of that limelight,” he laughs.
“The game itself and what is available for kids today is astronomical, the amount of experienced coaches that have come on the scene, working within the clubs. It is absolutely fantastic. There are no excuses for kids not making the type of progress that their ability suggests they should be making.
“In my time there was no coaching, everybody was judged on their so called natural ability. The game in Galway city and county has come on astronomically. There is no comparison to what it was like when I started out.”
Lally accomplished the mission of becoming a professional footballer. Reflecting back Lally believes it was a wonderful, but also worrying time. “It isn’t an easy life,” he says.
“Even today people might be envying players in England. It is a tough life, believe it or not. It is a very insecure life, you are living from one contract to the next. Hopefully along the way the manager is so impressed with you he keeps you on for another few years and so on.
“I signed for the club in the Gresham Hotel in Dublin and I began training with the club a week afterwards. Every single one of the players that had won the European Cup in 1967 were still under contract with the exception of Ronnie Simpson, the goalkeeper, who had been invalided out of the game. Ironically he had been involved in a collision with a Celtic player, who was out on loan to Clyde Football Club, the late Jimmy Quinn.
“The collision dislocated Ronnie Simpson’s shoulder and at 39 years of age he couldn’t come back. The experience of playing, working, and training with those players was phenomenal.
“Everything was done at a very quick pace, the skill levels were huge, the power of the shots, the speed of the ball, the speed of thought, it was something I took some time to adjust to.
“I think it took my nearly a whole year to adjust to the pace of the training and the speed of thought required. Obviously it was a fantastic experience.”
Lally remains a keen observer of the game in the west. Optimistic about Galway United and Galway WFC’s fortunes, Lally is encouraged by John Caulfield’s charges six match unbeaten streak. “Personally I’m delighted today to see our senior team, Galway United,what they are doing in the first division under the leadership of JohnCaulfield,” Lally says.
“Hopefully we will get into the promotion aspect of it towards the end of the season, to get up into the premier division.”
Still dreaming and believing.
