By John Harrington

Galway football captain, Gary O’Donnell, hopes more of the best players in the county commit to playing for the Tribesmen next year.

Earlier this year, team manager Kevin Walsh said that 52 players had turned down the chance to come in and train with the county panel since he took charge of the team.

But O’Donnell believes the fact that Galway went on to win their first Connacht title since 2009 will encourage some of those players to make the commitment in 2017.

“You’d hope so yeah,” says O’Donnell. “The Galway club Championship is quite competitive at times even though Corofin have dominated for a number of years.

“You’ve already said a lot of players have declined the offer. I can’t speak for them.

“I know a lot of our lads said earlier on in the year that playing for the county is a huge thing to do and there’s a lot of pride in lads. It’s up to Kevin, and whoever he asks to come in whether they have the appetite for it. We’ll see.”

There was as serious buzz in the Galway after they beat Mayo in the Connacht semi-final and then Roscommon in the final after a replay.

They then went into the All-Ireland Quarter-Final against Tipperary as hot favourites, but feel to a heavy 3-13 to 1-10 defeat. O’Donnell insists they didn’t take the Tipperary challenge for granted.

“We didn’t to be honest with you, because we talked about it a lot before the game, where they were at and where we were coming from the last couple of years, being on the wrong end of a couple of defeats and poor performance,” he says.

“We knew we couldn’t take anything for granted when we were playing them. I just think we probably put a lot of time and effort into the Connacht Championship and the fact it went to a replay as well, there was probably a huge sense of relief after that.

“Just flat on the day and just didn’t play to our ability and a lot of credit has to go to Tipp for that as well.”

“In fairness the probably didn’t give enough credit that they deserve - it definitely puts a bit of perspective, motivation and hunger into next year. We’ll have it all to prove again.

Despite that defeat to Tipperary, Galway manager Kevin Walsh was subsequently ratified for a new three-year term by the Galway county board, a decision O’Donnell says all the players are fully supportive of.

“Definitely yeah, a lot of the work and improvements we’ve done over the past two years has been down to Kevin and his management team. The fact that he got another three year term is brilliant for us that he can bring forward what he has done with us and hopefully get a bit of consistency in our performances as well.

“If at the start of the year you were given a Connacht Championship in January you would obviously have taken it with both hands. We are going into 2017 as defending Connacht champions, which is very encouraging. It definitely gives us a different perspective leading into the Mayo or Sligo game, whichever it is.”