If Padraic Joyce wants to begin again with Galway, he needs to find a way to begin better

“FAILURE IS THE opportunity to begin again more intelligently,” once reckoned Henry Ford.

Nice sugary words, but Ford was in the business of making cars, not championship-winning football teams.

In sport, more often than not, failure is not an opportunity, just a place where you get to step off and away when you are a manager.

Inside 20 hours last weekend, two genuine football icons were left eyeballing that reality. Dessie Farrell blinked instantly, but Padraic Joyce played the “time is not now “ card often favoured by the out of luck and out of time bainisteoir, but it is likely he did so with reason.

Two men who are weaved deep into the narrative of their respective counties, championship winning players on the pitch and iconic figures to those off it; for all that they had in common in that unwanted shared space last weekend, there is a chasm in achievement and perspective separating them.

It was Farrell who invited the greater sympathy, visibly choking with emotion as he spoke about leaving behind players who he came to know first as boys and has now left them behind as aged veterans, but there is little need for tears to be shed on his part. All he truly lost last weekend was a game of ball, one that was not gravely consequential for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, even if Dublin had beaten Tyrone, the road ahead would likely have been short, although it may have stretched slightly if Con O’Callaghan recovered his full fitness. Simply put, Dublin were not good enough to win the Sam Maguire.

- Legacy -

More significantly, failure is not something that can be pinned on Farrell. He now stands only behind Jim Gavin and Kevin Heffernan in the pantheon of Dublin’s most successful managers, which is not a bad place to be.

When you consider that this was a job in which many believed he was set up to fail, inheriting a team that had already planted its flag on the five-in-a-row summit, that he squeezed two All-Irelands out of a sated team and a stalled production line was, in many ways, a stunning achievement.

Deciding to stay with the team for a final season as a line of generational talents left was as much a final act of care as a declaration of ambition.

The future of Dublin in the short term is uncertain, even if Ger Brennan’s announcement this week that he was stepping away from Louth will invite many to fill in the obvious blank.

Thing is, Dublin football’s pressing need is less about finding a manager for its showcase team and more about weaponising its huge resources, financial, coaching and, above all, playing numbers, to ensure a flow of high-end players which right now is not there.

In that sense, whether Farrell stayed or went has little impact on where Dublin go, but in Galway’s case, whether Joyce sticks or twists most certainly does, both on a personal level and for the county’s short-term future.

The likelihood that decision will be left to him is validation of his five seasons in charge, especially in a county that was once not renowned for its stability on that front. (In the last six years of his storied playing career, Joyce played under four different managers.)

In fairness, his predecessor Kevin Walsh brought stability but what Joyce brought went beyond that. It is easily forgotten now, but when he declared his ambition to win the All-Ireland on his appointment in 2019, the sniggers right around the country were audible.

Four Connacht titles and two All-Ireland final appearances later, talk of Galway being the best in the land has long stopped being a laughing matter, but the fact remains that Joyce’s manifesto has not been delivered on. For that reason alone, it may well be that leaving is not an option.

Unlike Farrell, he has a group that has all the components to not only contend but win the Sam Maguire.

There was almost a consensus, even when the ink was only drying on the FRC’s new rules, that the most obvious “core enhancement” was to Galway’s chances of winning the All-Ireland this year.

They had the stand-out individual defenders to go man to man, a surplus of primary ball winners in the middle eight to pillage restarts, and a defined, fearsome three forwards up top to turn all those advantages into hard currency.

It never rolled like that for Galway this year (Damian Comer’s prolonged absence a key factor) – with the exception of their midfield mauling of Roscommon in Connacht – where the sense of a team chasing its tail was hard to shake.

- Missing link -

If the measure of a manager’s standing with his players is their ability to keep playing for him, Joyce is on firm ground.

They could and should have been eliminated from the All-Ireland series inside two rounds, trailing Derry by eight points in Celtic Park but found a way back to parity. Similarly, despite being played off the pitch against Armagh, they found a way, albeit against opponents who had nothing to play for.

They survived a frantic, fun game of ping-pong football against Down, but in many ways that only served to highlight Galway’s inability to manage games, albeit it is a harder challenge given the game’s new freestyle ways.

And that shines a light back on the Galway sideline; not necessarily on who was there, but on who wasn’t.

It was only when Cian O’Neill arrived in 2022 that Galway’s swagger under Joyce also found structure, and the former’s unexpected departure to Kerry in the close season was a huge blow that they struggled to recover from.

It is probably unfair to single out moments but there was a lack of clarity about Galway’s thought process.

It can be obviously distilled, in a season when kick-outs are king, to the ongoing muddled thought process that must have left Conor Gleeson and Conor Flaherty both feeling that they were auditioning live for their place as much as kicking for their team.

It was there in critical moments last Sunday against Meath. Dylan McHugh’s failure to off load to Shane Walsh for an open goal, and Paul Conroy’s decision to unsuccessfully take on a two-pointer when he had two players to lay it off to, are the kind of errors not associated with ruthless contenders.

Above all, right at the death, when Walsh kicked a two-pointer to give them a lifeline that could only be availed of by getting the ball back, they switched off to allow Billy Hogan clip the ball short free of pressure. Game over.

Meanwhile, a couple of hours later, Kerry, with O’Neill on the line, suffocated Armagh through relentless pressure off their kick-out tee.

That is why Joyce has much to ponder.

Beginning again is not an option unless he can find a way, and a coach, to allow them to begin better.