On today's edition of the Hard Shoulder, in addition to interviewing our star turn, Wexford legend Matty Forde, we ran the rule over the weekend's football.
While neutrals everywhere were giddy at the sight of Tipp breaking new ground, we instead pondered Galway's shockingly abject performance, a jarring display which is so hard to square with their performances in Castlebar in the Connacht championship.
Gary Sice marveled at the extent of Tipperary's homework this week in comments given to the Irish Examiner, employing the curious phrase 'they knew more than they should have known'.
On our pod, Anthony Moyles simply stuck to the line that Galway were outworked all over the place. He did speculate that they might have over-celebrated their provincial success, a victory which was a long time coming.
Therein lies the problem with Galway. They look like a serious team in the provincial final. They have their defence sorted out. Moving very, very well, Hungry for the ball, lots of running.
And then they come up to Croke Park and every single element that I just spoke about stops. The only man who actually wanted the ball and consistently showed for the ball and worked was Comer. The rest were a pale shadow of their former selves.
And that's disappointing - for them. Because they're a better team than that. There's no doubt about it, they're a better team than that. But Tipperary just outworked them. Absolutely outworked them. All over the field.
I don't know if it was a provincial final hangover. Often that happens. A team wins a final that they haven't won for a long time. And then they go out in the next round and get beat by a team who had momentum. And you may say that if win a provincial final, you should have momentum, of course you should. But maybe they celebrated too hard. I don't know. The Galway Races were on. Plenty of craic to be had...
Before that we interviewed Matty Forde - who confirmed to us beforehand that his first name is not spelled 'Mattie'. Among other things he talked about:
- How the updated GAA championship structures gives the stronger counties even more of a chance of reaching the latter stages
- Why he's happy he's not playing senior football anymore and doesn't particularly enjoy watching it
- How the assumption that he 'carried' Wexford was very unfair on his teammates
Listen below:
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Matty was speaking on the third episode of this year's Hard Shoulder podcast, a weekly GAA podcast hosted by Meath legends Anthony Moyles and Niall Kelly. The podcast will run for the rest of the season and will feature many more special guests, and scientists [citation needed] believe it will improve your life by somewhere in the region of 84%.
In addition to the big interview, we quiz our guests and discuss some of the big stories to arise from the past week.
On the first episode last week Bernard Brogan was interviewed about Dublin's dominance, his abilities vis a vis his brother Alan, and how he'd approach the game had he born in a different county. Listen here.
On the second episode, Johnny Doyle killed a few of the myths that had grown around Kieran McGeeney and spoke about the changing nature of the media coverage of the GAA since his early playing days. Listen here.
You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and Stitcher.
