Galway went eight years without a Connacht title between 1987 and 1995. If they lose to Mayo on Saturday, they will surpass even that lengthy drought.
Galway's disappearance from the top table following that brief but rather intense burst of achievement in the late 90s/early 2000s has been bizarre and slightly mysterious.
The well of talent hardly dried up. In 2002, the year after their last senior success, Galway won the U21 All-Ireland final against Dublin. They've won three further All-Ireland titles at U21 level (2005, 2011, 2013) and a minor All-Ireland in 2007.
After the replay loss to Kerry in 2000, the class of '98 collected their second All-Ireland the following year. Winning two All-Irelands is infinitely cooler than winning one. Players invariably tend to insist that winning the second one is a far more satisfying experience.
Having scratched that itch, the hunger levels appeared to wane. In any event, 2001 feels like the last All-Ireland final of the 1990s. Galway and Meath promptly departed the big-time and Armagh won the All-Ireland final the following year. Gaelic football entered a new era and Galway never really adjusted to the change in climate. They seem to have been playing catch-up ever since.
Yesterday in the Irish Times, Ciaran Murphy wrote about the 'apathy' which was strangling Galway football. This weekend, Kevin Walsh has been forced to go with five debutants in a semi-final match against Mayo. Since he assumed the job last year, 52 players have declined a place in the senior setup. The apathy isn't just confined to the players.
Murphy wrote of one man from Tuam who said that if one was to ask the locals their hopes for the championship, most would assume that you were talking about the hurling.
Apathy is nothing new in Galway football. The game was a wasteland in Galway in the early 1990s and the county more or less ignored their football team for the duration.
In the 1992 Connacht semi-final against Mayo in Tuam, the away supporters outnumbered the home fans by a ratio of 2:1.
In the 1995 Connacht championship match in Carrick-on-Shannon - the first live televised game in the west and the match which kick-started Galway's late 90s revival - there were reputedly no more than 200 Galway supporters in attendance. And this for a match against the reigning Connacht champions. In his Laochra Gael profile, Ja Fallon recalled the barely audible smattering of polite applause the greeted the team when they ran out on the field.
Perhaps the clue to this public apathy lies in the fact that 'there is always the hurling'. Dual counties may be uniquely susceptible to this kind of dilemma. If one of the county teams is thriving, people have no time for their struggling brethren in the other code.
After all, the Cork footballers have always seemed to struggle to win the affection of their people. Crowds dried up in Offaly in the noughties.
Galway has always been neatly geographically divided on the GAA front with the south and east of the county devoted to hurling and the north and west providing the bulk of players to the football team. That people in Tuam these days are instinctively inclined to think of the hurlers before the footballers hints at a real crisis in Galway football.
With the hurlers gunning for the elusive All-Ireland - and there was a very healthy Galway contingent in Mullingar - people have little time to think about a football team who can't get off the road to nowhere.
Galway and Mayo has traditionally been a tit-for-tat relationship. The pair are usually neck and neck in the Nestor Cup stats. Mayo passed out Galway in the Connacht roll of honour after winning the 2014 Connacht Final.
Galway remain well ahead of their neighbours in the race for the Sam Maguire. After the embarrassing loss in Salthill in 2013, one Galway man sounded a defiant note on the Sunday Game that night, firing off a rallying text on one of the darkest days in all of Galway football history.
'Whatever happened today, one thing's for sure. Galway will win the All-Ireland before Mayo will!!
It's a view that looks hopelessly optimistic with every passing year.
