Galway’s Jack Glynn still after ultimate goal of winning an All-Ireland title

Jack Glynn of Galway: "It is hard to watch it because you get so down about it. You are looking back and you are going, ‘I would have done this different and that different’." Photo: Sportsfile

Donnchadh Boyle Twitter Email

January 27 2023 02:03 AM

On more than one occasion, Galway’s Jack Glynn has tried to look back at last year’s All-Ireland final defeat and not made it to the end.

“I have watched snippets of it,” he sighs. “I had to walk away a few times; it is hard to really sit down for the full hour and a half and watch it.

“It is tough, because we obviously broke it down and looked at certain stuff,” Glynn (inset right) said.

“But it is a tough one to watch back, because we were so close and so far at the same time.”

In the rewatch , he sees all the small moments that went against them. All the grains of rice that – eventually – tipped the game away from them. And all the things he might have done better.

“I remember looking back at a foul or two you made when there were bodies back, and you are kicking yourself over it. It is hard to watch it because you get so down about it. You are looking back and you are going, ‘I would have done this different and that different’. But it is easy to say that in hindsight. Even a few simple skill errors as well, you would look back and kick yourself over it.”

As captain of the All-Ireland-winning Galway U-20 team in 2020, and part of a dominant Claregalway underage team that lost just one championship match through the age grades in the county, Glynn might have been expected to make the leap to senior earlier.

But he surprised even himself with his progress in 2022.

The year started on a low note as he suffered a broken jaw after a collision with Matthew Tierney at Galway training that saw him miss most of UL’s Sigerson campaign, appearing off the bench in the final.

Still he managed to do enough to persuade Galway manager Pádraic Joyce to throw him in from the start against Mayo for his championship debut.

From there, he never looked back and chipped in with a point in the All-Ireland final – and capped the season with a Young Footballer of the Year award.

“As a player, playing against lads, you know how much you have to improve on – and to be thrown into the thick of it, you have to learn pretty quick. It was a great experience but I would not have been expecting it at all.”

Glynn has missed UL’s opening Sigerson Cup games as he wrestles with a groin injury, which puts a question mark over his participation in tomorrow night’s league opener against Mayo in Castlebar.

But the experience of last year has left him in no doubt about where he and Galway want to be.

“To be honest, the biggest thing I wanted to do (after losing the All-Ireland) was be around people who weren’t going to talk about it.

“I kind of surrounded myself with people who were good friends, obviously family as well, and they knew that it was a subject not to really go there with me.

“Also with the lads as well, it’s not something you really want to dwell on. There’s time for that (later), you can go back and analyse the game but it’s definitely not something you want to do in the weeks after.

“You come to deal with it then. But it doesn’t make it any easier.

“Like it was one of the worst dressing-rooms you could go into after a game but it’s something that’s going to stick with you.

“And, as you said, it’s something you’re going to use going forward – and it’s something we can hopefully draw on this year as well.”

“Pádraic (Joyce) has never faltered from his stance that the ultimate goal is an All-Ireland. We’re going to have to take it day by day and month by month ... see how we go in the National League.

“Then your aim is to push on and win a provincial championship, but obviously, the ultimate goal is the All-Ireland. We’ll see how it goes.”