By Pádraic Ó Ciardha

PADRAIC Joyce has never been shy in voicing his desire to win trophies as Galway manager and he will have a chance to add another to the collection as Galway take on Mayo in Sunday’s National Football League Division One Final (4pm).

With the championship coming over the horizon so soon after the end of the league, plenty of managers were saying one thing but probably thinking another when asked this spring about their ambitions of reaching the final, but there’s a genuine sense with Joyce that’d he’d love nothing more than to be watching Seán Kelly march up the steps of the Hogan on Sunday, even if April silverware doesn’t quite have the same shine as that won later in the year.

Joyce is clearly a man who takes the history of Galway football seriously, no surprise really seeing as he contributed so much to it, and speaking in the aftermath of last weekend’s win over Kerry, he was quick to point out that you have to go back a fair while for the last time Galway did win a Division One title, something even he didn’t manage as a player. When you add the fact that the game on Sunday represents a chance to beat Mayo in Croke Park, there’s little doubt that Joyce and Galway will be gunning for a win.

“It’s a national title. People say they don’t want to win the league but I lost three finals as a player and some of the lads lost one to Dublin a few years ago. It’s going back to 1981 when we last won and that’s a long, long time. I said it before that the teams who are successful in championship pick up league titles along the way whether it’s every second or third year.

“We’re no different. We have ambitions to do what we did last year [reaching an All-Ireland Final] and go one step farther. It’s an extra battle again and when a team lose an All-Ireland final, it’s interesting to see how their league goes. We could have just stuck in mid-division and stayed up but the lads pushed it on. We had a target to get to a league final and now we’re in the final and we’ve to go now and pick it up next week.”

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.

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