Some people are just special. They have an innate set of skills and abilities that make them stand out from the get go at something.
When it comes to football, Padraig Joyce has always been one of them. On the field he was fearless and ferocious - everyone has doubts, but he never seemed to show that he had.
Coolness and composure were his hallmark, never fearing to take on the challenge of going to win the game and doing what had to be done.
In an interview on Galway Bay FM when he first got appointed to the Galway managers position he stated his aim very clearly saying: "I'm a Galway man by heart and by nature. I want to do the best I can for Galway, and our aim is to win an All-Ireland. Simple as that” before adding “Anything less would be seen as underachieving.”
A pretty bold statement when the county had failed to live up to expectations in almost two decades - but that was Joyce being Joyce and no one ever doubted he meant what he said.
It was 18-years since Galway had previously won the All Ireland when he said that, in the intervening four and a bit years Sam Maguire has still failed to come Corribside but he has brought them close.
The 2022 run to the final and the battle with Kerry that day is a game that showed that Galway were not that far away. Last season saw a bit of a hangover, despite calming another Connacht title, Mayo saw them off in the preliminary quarter final.
The league was a grind, with a wins over Monaghan and Tyrone along with a draw against Roscommon the only positive results, but those dog days of early Spring are firmly in the background now.
Things were slow moving in Connacht too, a hard fought late come from behind win over Sligo in the semi-final following a facile win over a poor London side in the quarter-final didn’t exactly fill the year with hope.
But when it came to the crunch, Galway found exactly what they needed when they edged out Mayo in the a memorable provincial final in Salthill thanks to Conor Gleeson’s late point. That victory was celebrated with great lust and vigour and why shouldn’t it have been - it marked a turning point in the season for Galway and showed they were still there to be reckoned with.
The round robin stages were all about ensuring passage to the knock-out stages and that was achieved with wins over Derry and Westmeath, before a draw with Armagh in round three in Sligo saw Joyce’s men head into the preliminary quarter-finals again on scoring difference.
There will be ten times as many people who were in Markievicz Park six weeks ago for that game in Croke Park this weekend to see a repeat of that clash. In another quirk of fate the man in the middle that day will be once again the man in black on Sunday, when Sean Hurson takes charge of the All Ireland final.
That game between the sides will have given Galway plenty of warning that they can’t take their foot off the gas no matter how comfortable they feel they are at any stage. They led by five points with little over ten minutes to go, only to see Armagh steel the draw at the end and squeeze past Galway as group winners.
But no matter the road taken, both sides have got to the penultimate destination and just 70 minutes stand between them and glory. The circuitous route hasn’t done Galway any harm either, they dusted themselves off with a win over Monaghan a week after that Armagh game and they really announced their return as real deal contenders with their stunning win over Dublin, thanks to a powerful second half showing.
It’s been a tough season, where Galway have had to dig deep at times and they have found a way to get the job done when they needed to the most, and even the emotion and elation of seeing off Dublin in a knock out game would not have really meant anything had they come undone in the semi-final against Donegal as Joyce admitted afterwards saying.
"After the emotion of beating Dublin the last day, it would have been a damp squib had we lost today,”
The war wounds and the things they had learned about themselves is something they were able to call on in the semi-final Joyce acknowledged saying:
"I think we were a more battled hardened team coming down the stretch. If you look at the games we played – Mayo in the Connacht Final, the Sligo game obviously we were in trouble, but we found a way to win it, and then we have had Derry, Armagh, Westmeath, Dublin the last day, whereas Donegal the last two games they have coasted through probably Clare and Louth easier than they would have liked.”
Everyone would love to see a flowing game of football, where you could imagine Joyce in his own pomp pulling the strings on the field and landing scores the normal Joe Soap wouldn’t even dare to dream - but Joyce is a pragmatist on the sideline and he knows that when the full time whistle is blown on Sunday, all that will be remembered in the record books is who was standing tall at the very end.
His team have found a way to win when it mattered every time so far this season and it would be a fool to discount his side finding whatever way necessary on Sunday. The new Vanguard.
