James Skehill ponders bright Galway future with focus on minor decider

Galway selector James Skehill admits he'd be "borderline devastated" if at least half a dozen of his minor hurlers don't go on to have long senior careers.

The ex-goalkeeper has high hopes for a group that has reached the Electric Ireland All-Ireland minor final with a whopping 100 points to spare.

Fergal Healy's team have won each of their six games by double-digit margins and blitzed the Leinster championship in their first season in it.

Skehill says they want to finish the job now and to claim a 15th title at the grade but admits development is more important than silverware.

He reckons Galway didn't get enough players through from his own minor days of 2005 and 2006, when Galway won one final and lost another, and is desperate to avoid a repeat.

Skehill said: "I look at our group at the minute and I'd be disappointed, borderline devastated, if we didn't get six if not seven regular senior players through from it.

"And when I say regular I'm talking about playing for a decade. We want guys to stay the course, to get into a senior squad and to form part of that squad for eight, nine, ten years.

"Go back to our time, myself and Joe Canning were actually talking about it the other day. I think from the 2006 team you had Joe, Aidan Harte, David Burke and myself. So four of us between the 2005 and 2006 teams who lasted 10 years on a senior team.

"Everybody else who came in was for two, three years and they were gone. That just wasn't enough of a return for the quality of players we had at that stage. So that's our objective and if you were to graph it out, you'd say, yes, the way they're starting out now you'd hope that we'd get six or seven regulars through."

Top scorer and free-taker Aaron Niland is among a number of players who