PADRAIC Joyce won’t let on who made the call.
“It doesn’t matter,” he says.
“We (himself and Kieran McGeeney) had the conversation.”
The previous day Joyce’s Galway had taken out Ulster champions Donegal. The day before that – in the first of the All-Ireland semi-finals - his ‘oul mate McGeeney’s Armagh had stunned Kerry.
Armagh v Galway… It’s the first All-Ireland final that hasn’t included a Dublin, Kerry or Mayo since Down v Cork in 2010 and you have to go back to Armagh-Tyrone in 2003 for the one before that.
So the pairing was long-odds, especially when the finalists drew their group game in Sligo in June. But Joyce believed. He sent ‘Geezer’ a message predicting they’d meet again in the ultimate act of this season’s drama.
“If ye look after yourselves, we’ll knock out Dublin and we’ll see you in the final,” he wrote.
Wasn’t that a ‘big speak’? As well as the Dubs, Galway had to win beat Monaghan and Donegal (all three in 14 days) to keep up their end of the bargain. The Orchardmen had to get past Roscommon and the Kingdom to keep theirs.
They did, and now… Sunday.
“He’s a good lad,” says McGeeney of his former adversary and team-mate ‘Joycer’.
“He’s a serious competitor, he’s clued in and he’s going to have them well prepared, he’s very confident in himself and he’ll have them the same way.”
Their friendship was forged in battle. Back in 2001 (their only Championship meeting) as Joyce sent a free sailing over Armagh’s bar, McGeeney was dumping Galway skipper Kieran Comer onto the Croke Park turf.
Booked for that, McGeeney soldiered on with a broken hand and inspired a brilliant Orchard comeback but Joyce’s five points and three assists meant Galway won the day.
As teammates on Allstar trips they got to know each other well and in the heat of the blood-and-thunder International Rules wars against Australia in the series’ of 2001, ‘02 and ‘03 they forged a lasting friendship.
Dublin’s Paddy Christie played alongside them on that 2003 Tour Down Under.
“They’re two fellas who weren’t afraid to put themselves about,” he says.
“The Australians were overly-physical at that time. It was borderline dirt, actually it wasn’t even borderline, it was just dirt. I remember in the first match in Perth Dessie Dolan got an awful hiding and Declan Browne didn’t even get to play in the Tests. He got taken out in a warm-up game against a club team - he got absolutely burst along the sideline.
“You’d want fellas who wouldn’t take a step back with you and the two of them were great like that.”
Christie spent many an afternoon playing against both All-Ireland managers and regularly marked Joyce in the Dublin-Galway encounters.
“They were interesting battles with Padraic, shall we say,” added Christie, who stepped down as Longford manager earlier this week.
“He had all the frills as a forward. Kieran was a good player, he was a good distributor of the ball but his physicality was important. Both are very intense fellas but I always had the impression that McGeeney was more intense off the pitch as well.
“Padraic was always in good shape but McGeeney was in great shape for a fella who had issues with his knees and stuff like that.
“I wouldn’t have particularly liked him when we were playing and he probably didn’t like me but when the game was over we shook hands and he’s a decent fella.
“I’m not surprised they’ve done well. Kieran in particular has got a bad press and that’s unfair because he’s given a lot of his life to bring on this Armagh group – same as Padraic with Galway – and you have to admire what he’s done. County managers get expenses and they might get something out of it but for the amount of time that’s given it would be a lot easier not to do it.
“For the time you put in and the hassle you get… I’d be happy to see someone like McGeeney have their day in the sun but I wish both of them the best of luck. They’ve both given a lot of service to their counties and that should be remembered.”
McGEENEY has reached the summit after a 10-year trek with Armagh and Joyce is also a man for the long haul on the hard road. He succeeded his former team-mate Kevin Walsh as manager of the Tribesmen in 2019 and, after a couple of difficult seasons with a gung-ho, we’ll-score-more-than-you style, he has guided Galway to a Connacht three in-a-row as well as the All-Ireland final in 2022.
His Galway team is a formidable blend of silky forwards like Shane Walsh and Rob Finnerty and the nickel-alloy steel of John Maher, Damian Comer, Paul Conroy and others.
“Galway football over the years would have been known for having nice nippy lads so we went after a few big fellas definitely and we got them in there,” said Killererin clubman Joyce.
“The lads have developed well: John Maher has developed from what he was, he is a huge animal of a man now, Mattie Tierney has grown into a serious man as well.
“They just happened to come around at the same time and physicality down the middle eight is huge now.”
After the group game against Galway in Sligo last month, several of the Armagh players limped fairly gingerly back to their dressingroom. It was what they call a ‘bruising encounter’ but the Orchardmen, who have brought Connaire Mackin in for the final, aren’t lacking for big units either. From the midfield pairing of Niall Grimley and Ben Crealey to Rian O’Neill, Andrew Murnin and Barry McCambridge there are men who will not be pushed off the ball and Joyce predicts another a physical battle.
“We would probably have been seen as having a soft centre over the years but I think the lads have proved over the last couple of years that there is a good edge to them and they can mix the game either way they want,” he says.
“Even in my own time, we lost games by a point coming down the stretch. I think teams had the impression: ‘Let’s get Galway down the stretch and they will wilt, or they will fold’. Thankfully that perception is gone now because we have been down the stretch with some of the top teams in the country this year and we have stuck it out.
“Against Donegal, I didn’t feel we were in trouble. At the time I did honestly feel that we were okay solely because we had done it previously. We did it in the Connacht final, we were two down when Sean Kelly dispossess Matthew Ruane for a vital turnover and we get a score off that. We win the kick-out and we get the winning score off it. I think that’s in the lads.”
GALWAY have replaced that “soft centre” with Connemara granite and the same is true of Armagh who, for years under McGeeney flattered to deceive with an electric spell of football followed by a power failure.
McGeeney made his team harder to beat and then virtually impossible to beat unless it’s on penalties. Galway were the first to conquer Armagh in a shootout in the 2022 All-Ireland quarter-final and Derry, Monaghan and Donegal have won in the same manner since.
But Joyce will know that Armagh will keep coming, and coming on Sunday. The Orchardmen seem to produce their best football when they’re in danger of falling too far behind.
“You’d nearly want to stay behind them the whole game and try and catch them at the end,” said Joyce.
“We know Armagh inside-out. It makes our analysis easier because we have prepped well over the last two years and we’ve only played two games since we played them last. It’s going to be a battle, it’s going to be really tight.
“It’ll go down to the wire and I think the team that makes the same mistakes will win the game.”
THIS final will be Galway’s 10th Championship match of the season and to put that not context, the three in-a-row Galway side of 1964-’66 played 11 matches in those three seasons.
Galway also lost three All-Ireland finals on-the-trot between 1940 and 1942 and Joyce says it’s important for this team to make it’s mark.
“It is important without putting the pressure on ourselves,” he said.
“I wouldn’t say it’s do-or-die but it’s important but once our lads go in and perform I think they should be okay.
“We were 12/1 or 14/1 to win the All-Ireland at one stage and now we’re 5/6 to win it. We navigated the preliminary round and we had a tough game against Monaghan too.
“All those games stood to us, that’s why thinking back to the last day we were very battle-hardened and again Armagh proved that when they played Kerry, they were the more battle-hardened when the pressure came on, with 10-15 minutes to go.
“We have had five very hard games along the way, six maybe. We’re okay.”
IT’s not hard to see where that Galway confidence is coming from. In February, Joyce’s side beat Tyrone by a point in Omagh without Damian Comer, Shane Walsh, Sean Kelly, Liam Silke, Cillian McDaid and Cein Darcy. All six are fit and named to start which means the likes of John Daly, Kieran Molloy and Johnny Heaney are all on a bench that can only be rivalled by Armagh’s for it’s strength-in-depth.
It’s a great problem for Joyce to have and, like McGeeney who has left ever-present Peter McGrane out of his starting line-up, he admits he has found picking teams very difficult.
“I’d be getting phone calls to ask: ‘Why I’m not on?’ and: ‘Why I should be on’,” he explains.
“It’s great. Over the years you wouldn’t have got as many of them but the lads themselves know that it is really hard.
“There are huge calls to be made at the time but the calls we made, the lads that came in stepped up as well. It’s great. We had to develop our squad, whether we liked it or not we probably did that unknown to ourselves in the League with all the injuries we had.
“When you turn around to a bench in the last two games there and you see you have Johnny Heaney sitting behind you waiting to go and John Daly…
“It’s great to have that experience to see a game out.
“John was an Allstar centre-back two years ago, Kieran Molloy should have got an Allstar and they can’t even make the six at the back at the minute! It’s great.
“There’s brilliant competition in the squad and brilliant for management but, I have to say, the lads understand that and realise that but there is still great competitiveness there.
“When the lads are playing, those that aren’t will shake their hands and wish them well.”
Kelly, Comer, Silke and Walsh and the rest of them pushed Kerry close to the wire two years ago. That final was tied at 16 each as the winning post came into view but the Kingdom found a sprint finish to win by four points.
“This is a completely different group,” says Joyce.
“There’s maybe 12 different lads from what was there before. So it’s a different group, different challenge, different game…”
WILL Sunday turn out to be a different game to the last three Championship meetings between these counties? We’ve had Galway’s penalty win after the draw in 2022, Armagh’s one-point win last year and then the draw last month.
There genuinely is nothing between teams who know each other well managed by men who could say the same.
“I have great time for Geezer,” says Joyce.
“He’s a football man, no more than myself. He gave a lot to his county as a player and he’s now giving back to his county as a manager.
“We’re both in it to win it. We had the phone conversation after the semi-finals just to wish each other well and we knew where we were going to go.
“We’ll have a chat when the final is over. He’s doing his best for his county, I’m doing the best for my county and we’ll take it from there.”
But don’t get the impression there’s an ‘old boy’ network of inter-county managers’ on the go. Joyce says his exchange with McGeeney isn’t a regular thing.
“I’d be pally with Jim (McGuinness) and Kieran, they’d be the two I’d be close to,” says Joyce.
He knocked McGuinness out the last day and on Sunday he’ll do all he can to do the same to McGeeney.
And vice-versa of course…
