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After sombre week where they buried inspirational John O’Mahony, Galway aiming to relive glory days vs Donegal
One of his former star players told SunSport of the massive guiding influence O'Mahony had on him
JOHN O’MAHONY holds up a newspaper in the iconic documentary A Year ’til Sunday.
Kevin Walsh is metres away as his manager reads out the infamous headline: “Galway, fancy Dans.”
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Niall Finnegan had just got the Tribesmen out of jail in the 1998 Connacht final as they snatched a 0-11 apiece draw with Roscommon in Tuam.
The camera cuts to middle men Walsh and Seán Ó Domhnaill as O’Mahony reads the next sentence aloud.
“‘Don’t have a midfield pairing capable of winning the majority of team possession . . . missing frees’.
“All those kinds of things. There’s only one f***ing answer for that.”
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Galway gave their answer in the replay at Dr Hyde Park, winning 1-17 to 0-17 after extra-time as Michael Donnellan fired 1-3.
Their manager had just won the Connacht title at the helm of a third different county — Mayo, Leitrim and Galway — and Sam Maguire was in the Tribesmen’s sights.
Current boss Pádraic Joyce lit up Croke Park with 0-8 in the pulsating All-Ireland semi-final win over Derry before they blew Mick O’Dwyer’s Kildare away in the final.
Walsh won an All-Star and would bag another when they lifted Sam again three years later under their magical manager from Mayo.
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Two weeks ago, Galway brilliantly dethroned All-Ireland champions Dublin as they look to land Sam for the first time since.
Eight days later, last Sunday, O’Mahony passed away at the age of 71.
Cork GAA hero Patrick Horgan plays with his son Jack at Croke Park after win over Limerick
The news plunged the GAA world into mourning, with his former midfield maestro Walsh forever in his debt.
Walsh, now 54, told SunSport: “I owe a lot to John O’Mahony.
“Taking my own age group, I suppose we were coming to a point where, ‘Would we ever win anything?’
“And the younger lads at 20 coming through, he kept them grounded as well. The whole group owes him a lot.
“He would always look for motivation or something that could be used as motivation.
"And I know a lot of the ‘fancy Dans’ stuff is going around now, but that’s only a small part of what he would be doing every day.
“But yeah, look, he was a great man to find motivation, to try and motivate people, so that’s where the fancy Dans stuff came out of.
“He went out of his way, I suppose, to deal with people individually for different individual needs, which happens in life but it also happens in football.
“He might have been one of the first managers to go that route of not one glove fits all.
"He just tended to break down the importance of the small things that make people tick.”
CROSSED THE DIVIDE
A Mayo man getting the Galway job was always going to create unease — but nobody was complaining the following September.
From that moment on, O’Mahony was one of their own.
Thousands paid their respects as he was laid to rest in his beloved Ballaghaderreen on Thursday.
Hundreds also lined the streets of Tuam and Dunmore when he made his final journey through Galway football’s heartlands, and Killanin man Walsh knows that love for him will never die.
He said: “You could see all the respect down around Dunmore and Tuam last weekend and if he happened to be going back to the Connemara side he would get the same respect.
“So he was really a Mayo man that was taken in by the Galway family and he’s as much Galway as we are ourselves. He’s loved in Galway and always will be.
“People are in total shock, we all saw John as a leader, a great man and a powerful man.
“Behind it all he was a quiet man but was always very clear on what he wanted to do.
"And look, what can you say about him? He was professional, his attention to detail, his planning, his strategy.
“He’s strategic. All that type of stuff you can put down to him.
“More importantly he was a people’s person, a communicator of people and always looked out for people’s individual needs, which is a true sign of a caring person.
“He was a family man, and you can see that by his wife Geraldine and his daughters.
"You could see how over the years at any events, how close they were together.
"Geraldine, he relied a lot on her and she relied a lot on him.
“I think for one of the busiest men in the country with politics and sport and everything else, he always seemed to find time for the important things and a lot of it was in the background which people wouldn’t even see.”
When Walsh went into management himself, O’Mahony was always there when needed — from taking the Sligo job in 2009, managing Galway himself for five seasons until 2019 and joining Cork last year as a coach.
It has been a sombre week in the west in the run-up to Galway’s All-Ireland semi-final clash with Donegal at Croke Park today.
But Walsh knows Joyce and coach John Divilly will have no shortage of inspiration from above.
He said: “Of course it will be great motivation for the team, particularly when so many of the backroom went through Johno’s hands.
“So I’m sure John will be up there doing everything he can, but he’d be trying to calm things down as well and telling them to keep the emotions to a level where you can perform.
“So that would have been the balancing act for the week.
"Obviously there’s definitely motivation here to go out and do the best they can do, but to keep it balanced and keep the emotions tight as well.
“He would have been a very big part of my starting up, particularly in Sligo.
"You know, when I was trying to find my feet, he was a sounding board for me.
“I went to Boston with the Connacht team as a selector with him after I finished playing in 2006 and got time to sit down and chat to him before management jobs started to come up for me.
“He was always one of the first ports of call for me because of his experience and how much he was willing to help.
"So yeah, he had a huge effect on me.”