Galligan looking forward after breakthrough season

GAA interview

With any luck, the country won’t experience another year like 2020 for decades to come but for the Cavan footballers, a repeat – of the result on the pitch – would be welcome any time.

2020 was bizarre in so many ways that it won’t be fully appreciated for a long number of years to come. On the football field in the Ulster Championship, Cavan thrived, with numerous players taking their own games to the next level.

Chief among them was Thomas Galligan, whose heroic performances saw him pick up the Irish News Ulster Footballer of the Year award recently. And even the big Lacken Celtic man admits that, at one stage, he had almost given up hope that 2020 could be anything other than miserable.

Few of the supporters were probably aware that Galligan, 24, was managing injuries throughout the championship and having earlier contracted Covid, he wasn’t in the full of his health at any point, which makes his extraordinary performances all the more remarkable.

“I was carrying a bit of a hip injury the whole year and it flared up just in the middle of the lockdown probably because of not looking after it the right way. Towards the end of the club championship it flared up a bit and I tried to get on top of it and then playing a challenge match with Cavan, it flared up again,” said Galligan this week.

“And just as it flared up, I ended up getting Covid so I kind of had the year written off after that because I knew the struggle I’d have getting the injury right never mind getting back from Covid, because it wrote me off for about a week, not being able to breathe or walk or get out of bed.

“After that, I just took every week as it came and André [Quinn, S&C] and Risteard [Byrne, physio] got me back on my feet and got me able to get through games. It worked out grand but it wasn’t great now. The Monaghan game, I was under a bit of pressure.

“The Roscommon game the week before, I actually felt fine but the Monaghan game, it wasn’t great at all. I’d say if you take a closer look at the Monaghan game you can see my limping and hobbling around the field.

“Since then, I had to take a step back and get on top of little things that I’ve been doing wrong, running mechanics and technical stuff. I was in contact with Risteard and André and they put a plan together. There was no real rush in getting it right, it was more about getting it right however long that takes before we push on with getting fit.

“I have kind of got round it at this stage so hopefully I can push on and start working on getting a bit of fitness because I don’t think I’ve been fit since I was about 17!”

The obvious reaction is that if Galligan was capable of such stellar showings when not fit, his potential when he does fully hit his stride is endless. Then again, becoming the first Cavanman man to win the Ulster Player of the Year award since 1997 confirms his arrival as a leading inter-county player. Not that he is getting carried away about it…

“It’s nice to get recognised but it’s a team sport at the end of the whole lot so I’ll not really read into it that much. It reflects well on everybody on the team.

“Look, you’d obviously be delighted to get it but I suppose they were going to give it to one of us on the team. They could have picked one to 15 and it would have been a fair enough result. You’ll take it obviously, you’ll take the pats on the back.

“The way this year ran with no back door, teams only got one game and if they were knocked out early, they didn’t get a chance to show anything else. Say last year, we got to an Ulster final but I don’t think anyone got on to the team because teams who went on and got further into the All-Ireland championships got players voted on to the team.

“I suppose it was just the way the year ran but yeah, it reflects well on the team that we got 12 of the 15 spots. It was a good achievement for the team and well deserved.”

Thomas was contacted by the organisers on the day of the online ceremony and recorded a short clip at the hospital in Enniskillen where he is currently working.

“We got word and organised to do that little bit of an interview to make it seem live, but it wasn’t just as live as was let on. They didn’t let me know any earlier on the week or anything. Ah, it was nice, it was a nice surprise to get that day.

“I’m up on placement in Enniskillen in the Southwest Acute Hospital so I had to do a bit of begging to get a bit of time off to do the interview. But it only lasted about five minutes so it was grand. It was handy to have the little office to do it in.

“I’m in Jordanstown doing physiotherapy. I’m in the second semester of second year. The first placement was meant to be summer but it got moved, they couldn’t let us into the hospitals. This is meant to be my second placement but it’s actually my first.

“It’s a three-year course and hopefully I’ll be finished and into the big bad world after that.”

Galligan watched Cavan’s opening McKenna Cup match early in 2020 from the stand; the following week, he was on the pitch. At that point, he had not rejoined the panel as he worked on his fitness.

“Every player has a target to meet when they come in on to the panel and I was in the middle of getting the groin right back then. I hadn’t really done much training, I was more doing rehab and bike work to try and get the fitness up but I hadn’t got on top of it enough.

“I was only getting myself back right and I hadn’t really joined the panel at that stage. I was obviously involved and in contact with Mickey and Dermot and them but I just hadn’t joined the panel as such. Then I got back up towards my targets and it just happened to be that one week I wasn’t involved and the next week I was but I was always sort of involved with the panel and knew what was going on. Again, I wasn’t just up to the peak of fitness back then either (laughs).”

As Mickey Graham stated on these pages recently, there has been a culture change in the Cavan camp regarding how the players looks after themselves in the off-season. These days, it’s all about ticking over and keeping fit so as not to undo the good work of the previous few months.

“It’s not that you’re not let, it’s not like a concentration camp where you have to do exactly what everyone says. It’s more a case that if you have put in a good shift in one year and make up ground and get stronger, faster, fitter and you take three months off and start back the next year where you started the year before, you’re not really gaining any ground, you’re just going round in a cycle.

“If you can make progress from one year, add to that in the off-season and you come back the following year 20pc better than you were the year before and keep building on that… I think that’s what a lot of the top teams do, you’d see the transformation of the likes of Dublin, Donegal and Tyrone, you see the physicality they have, the strength and conditioning that they have built up over years of not stopping.

“Obviously you take a bit of time out but you keep on top of your strength work, your fitness, you keep all the niggles away. I think it’s good to see Cavan in the same frame of mind of looking to go forward and develop.

“And it kind of sets the tone for anyone coming into the panel, that’s what’s expected of them and they know that. It’s not like you have to change anybody’s mind – if some lad doesn’t want to do it, he can stay at home because there’s no point in trying to pull a lad down to training if he doesn’t want to put in the work.

“What used to happen was lads would take the time out and then come back in the pre-season and try and get fit in a month and end up pulling a hammy or groin starting to flare up because they just went from doing nothing to doing far too much, too quickly. If you don’t let the body detrain, you don’t get into that position where you’re coming from zero.

“You’re always hovering around a bit of physical output so you’re always ready to up the gears instead of having to do low level stuff to build yourself back up into a position where you can attack that fitness or that strength work. You still need to have that strength work done.

“There is no point going back to square one every year because then you’re not really going anywhere. That’s what André has brought to the whole set-up, he’s able to put a guideline in for every individual to get the best for what they need, be it to lose weight or put on weight or get fitter or whatever.”

Leaps and bounds

Key to this change has been the arrival of strength and conditioning coach Quinn, he said.

“If you talk to any of the lads on the panel, they’d all have such good time for him because of what he has done on an individual level with each person. I don’t know if there is anybody on the panel he hasn’t brought on in leaps and bounds.

“You look at some of the younger fellas on the panel, they have put on a bit of size or got a bit fitter. Some of the older lads have lost a bit of weight… I think you can look at every individual player and see where André has made a difference in them.

“Personally, I’ve probably spent far too much time with him (laughs) because I have been injured too long! I’d have to give him an awful lot of credit for the year that I had last year because I think that the work that he did with me, keeping me on my toes and motivated if I was having an off day… I’d have to give him an awful lot of credit but he’d hate to hear that because he’s a quiet sort of fella. He deserves all the credit in the world.”

With one goal achieved, the challenge for Cavan now is to kick on.

“You’re always aware that you want to improve. There’s no point winning an Ulster title and not doing anything for another 23 years, you obviously want to try and build on it.

“Listening to Mickey and Dermot talking about it, they have a sense that they could have done more but at the same time, their team changed in the next few years [after 1997]. Our team hopefully won’t change much in the next few years and hopefully we can build. You’ve good young footballers in Cavan who will have seen the success and will hopefully come in with that same sort of drive to bring us on another level.

“Ah yeah, you want to improve this year, there’s no point resting on our laurels.”

In terms of setting targets for 2021, much depends on what shape the season will actually take, he said.

“It’s hard to know, it all depends on what sort of way the year develops. If the league goes ahead, obviously it would be a target to get out of Division 3 but you have a tough group with Derry, Fermanagh and Longford, two local derbies and then Derry are always going to be tough.

“That would be goal number one and after that you just have to try your best in the Ulster Championship, see who you get in the first round and take it from there.

“Obviously you’d love to go back to an Ulster final and win another Ulster but you have to take each game as it comes, there’s no point getting ahead of ourselves.”

Cavan’s season ended ultimately with defeat to Dublin in the All-Ireland semi-final. It’s hard, he says, to put a finger on how Dublin won that game with so much to spare.

“I’d say just simple mistakes that they don’t make. Every other team in the country makes them, you even saw Mayo in the All-Ireland final, they gave away the ball maybe three times and it’s three scores, that’s just it.

“It’s very hard to get it stopped if you make a mistake because you are out of position. If you make that mistake going up the field, you get turned over, you are out of position going back defending so it’s probably just not to make those simple errors, handling errors, a handpass, a kick pass, something like that that could let you down.

“It’s not like they’re all seven foot tall and can run 100 metres in 10 seconds, they’re normal humans but they do the simple things extremely well.

“It’s probably just to get that level of maybe confidence to execture the passes or maybe skillset to execute the passes correctly 100pc of the time. I think it will bring us on in experience in terms of dealing with those situations.

“Out the field, Dublin put on so much pressure on the ball. Against other teams, you might have two or three seconds to look up and pick out your pass but if you take or three seconds around the middle third against Dublin, you get eaten alive and turned over. It’s a learning experience.”