Joyce's Galway: Walking the walk and talking the talk

On 25 July 2021, Padraic Joyce's Galway reign appeared to be on a slow boat to nowhere after a second successive Connacht final loss to Mayo.

364 days later, after plenty of soul-searching in the off-season and a winter of renewal, Galway will pitch up in an All-Ireland football final for the first time in just over two decades.

It's a glorious turnaround for Galway football's ultimate modern darling, their greatest forward of the colour television era.

Who knows? If Galway get the job done and secure their own 'La Decima' at the weekend, he may even surpass Sean Purcell, whose exploits are preserved in Pathé News reels, as the county's most revered football figure.

Any murmurings about the regime or his suitability for the role, rather prevalent last autumn, have naturally disappeared amidst the 2022 winning streak.

As he observed to reporters at Galway's press day last week, "it's great when you win a game as manager, you're a tactical genius and when you lose, you haven't a clue."

Joyce's words on assuming the Galway job in late 2019 have been heavily revisited in recent weeks.

"A successful year one is to start off by winning the FBD League, then go on and win the National League and then win the All-Ireland," he told Galway Bay FM's Ollie Turner.

"That's our aim. It might sound far-fetched to a lot of people. I'm not saying we're going to win the All-Ireland in two years' time or three years' time. We're training for the 30th August next year (2020). That's when the final is on. If we don't do that, I'd see it as disappointment."

While this bullish statement of intent wasn't borne out in reality - in more ways than one (we now know that the 2020 All-Ireland final wasn't, in the end, played on the date originally envisioned)