Next Sunday is by far the biggest day in the inter-county hurling calendar to date with both provincial finals taking centre stage.
Henry Shefflin’s Galway team is looking to dethrone a four-in-a-row chasing Kilkenny with the Bob O’Keeffe Cup up for grabs in Croke Park (4pm ).
While an attractive game in its own right, much of the national attention will be focused on the preceding Munster final on Sunday afternoon (1.45pm ) when the All-Ireland champions take on Clare in the TUS Gaelic Grounds in what promises to be another epic encounter.
Whoever wins that tussle will be automatically installed as favourites to lift the Liam McCarthy, given the high-profile nature of the fixtures so far down south. By comparison Leinster, aside from the final round of fixtures, has been a damp squib, of that there can be no argument.
Galway is a team searching desperately for its best form just as the pressure begins to turn up a couple of notches. It is hardly the ideal situation, but this is where Henry Shefflin and his backroom team find themselves. They will have had two weeks to dissect and then move on from their draw with Dublin - a Jekyll and Hyde effort that will not cut the mustard against Derek Lyng’s men.
Galway need to find that elusive attacking balance between targeting their dynamic inside forwards with decent ball and getting the middle eight into worthwhile shooting opportunities. Galway at their best are physically dominant in the contact areas and use the ball intelligently, and battles of old against Kilkenny have led to titanic matches that have swung to and fro.
Kilkenny, though, are starting to follow Limerick’s lead in introducing more defined structure and short passing patterns to their play, so it will be interesting to see if Galway can counter this style. They have done so against Limerick in the past, based on a savage workrate and intensity, but Dublin exposed their limitations when those levels dropped alarmingly.
Galway have failed to score goals in both of their previous Leinster finals appearances against Kilkenny in 2022 and 2020, something which must be rectified on Sunday if they are to succeed. The modern game requires teams to be capable of racking up 30-plus points on any given day.
Goals kept Galway in the recent group encounter in Nowlan Park when Kilkenny threatened to cruise to victory, with Brian Concannon particularly effective. Conor Whelan was under-utilised last day out, but loves facing the black and amber brigade, and with Cathal Mannion assumed to be unavailable through injury, Galway will have to be ruthlessly efficient in front of the posts, something that has let them down on recent Croke Park visits.
Daithí Burke led by example yet again against Dublin, and the captain will need to set the tone from the first whistle on Sunday. Adrian Mullen’s expected absence weakens Lyng’s hand somewhat, but it is highly unlikely there will be anything more than a puck of the ball between these teams. It could well come down to whose bench makes the most impact.
