During the 2000s, Ger Loughnane took charge of Galway, with hopes high that the Clare man could deliver a first All-Ireland title since 2008 for the Tribesmen.
Loughnane had led Clare to their first All-Ireland title in 81 years in 1995, and added another in 1997, so he certainly had the pedigree when he took charge in Salthill ahead of the 2007 season.
However, his time as manager was to last only until the end of 2008, and ended in disappointment after two consecutive seasons of underachievement. An All-Ireland quarter-final exit in '07 was followed by an exit in the qualifiers the following year, and Loughnane departed to little fanfare.
Léigh an scéal seo trí Ghaeilge ar Liathróidí.ie brúigh anseo.
Since his exit from management, Loughnane has reflected on his time with Galway. He was part of a discussion on The Sunday Game in 2016 which sought to get to the bottom of why Galway had failed to make the leap to All-Ireland success at senior level and hinted at some of the issues he had witnessed in the camp during his time in charge.
The inter-club rivalries are so bitter, it's hard to put them all together and make them feel they're playing for their Galway jersey in the same way Kilkenny or even Tipperary do. When they put on the jersey, everything else is put aside.
One of the positives to come from Loughnane's time in charge was the emergence of a man who would become the face of the next decade and a half of Galway hurling. Making his inter-county debut during the 2008 season, Joe Canning would go on to claim an All-Star from his very first season with Galway - the first of five he would take during his career.
Looking ahead to the upcoming All-Ireland semi-finals in his Irish Times column, Canning told a hilarious story of an interaction with Davy Fitzgerald during that 2008 season which epitomised what could be considered an outdated approach from Ger Loughnane as manager.
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Joe Canning shares incredible Davy Fitz story from during Ger Loughnane's Galway reign
Though nobody could doubt the managerial chops of Ger Loughnane or question the immense fitness of his teams, there was certainly something rudimentary about the ruthless approach taken in training sessions under the Clare man.
Loughnane was known for running intense running training sessions, in the days before the immense strength and conditioning programmes favoured by modern GAA sides.
In his column for the Irish Times, Joe Canning summed up the approach of Loughnane with a bizarre story about Davy Fitzgerald.
Canning said that Loughnane's coaching team were determined not to be outdone by the fitness of their rivals and, having heard a rumour that the Waterford players were running 9k the day after a match, they were forced to follow suit. The only thing was that the rumour was completely false.
Our trainer, Louis Mulqueen, told us he had been talking to Davy and the Waterford players were on the beach in Tramore doing an 8km run. If they were doing that, we couldn’t do anything less, so off we went, doing laps of Pearse Stadium until we had covered 8km.
I was in college at the time in LIT, where Davy was manager of the Fitzgibbon Cup team. I was chatting to him a few days later and I mentioned to him about their long run on the beach. He burst out laughing. They had gone into the sea for a recovery session and had a bit of craic. No running. None.
Whether or not it was a case of Davy deliberately leading the Galway team on a wild goose chase, or something being lost in translation, we're sure Canning and his Galway teammates weren't exactly grateful for the unnecessarily strenuous run just hours after a championship game against Laois.
Two weeks after that incident, the Tribesmen were dumped out of the championship by Cork.
It's a window into the attitude of the Galway coaching team under Loughnane, as the GAA stood on the precipice of a dramatic shift in approach towards fitness.
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