Darren Morrissey excited about Galway's potential

Click here to listen to the full interview with Galway senior hurling captain Darren Morrissey.

By Cian O'Connell

Acquiring belief and confidence has been critical for Galway in 2026.

Captain Darren Morrissey acknowledges that Galway's combination of youthful and experienced players have been steely through the Championship. "Obviously, we've fairly underachieved the last few years and I think we kinda felt that we needed to start backing ourselves a bit more," Morrissey says.

"You see the hurlers we have there on the 15, on the 26, and even the calibre of hurlers not making panels.

"So, we're in a great position and when you get to go out training with some of the best hurlers in the county and Ireland, you can see what we can do with the ball. It's great and we're in a great place going into an All-Ireland Final."

Micheál Donoghue and his backroom team have worked on getting Galway players in the right mind space. "I think we're believing in ourselves more this year," Morrissey says.

"Galway always have the hurlers, but we were probably nearly going out playing games, I won't say knew we were going to lose, but nearly an air of inevitability out of it.

"Now, that we've finally built a bit of momentum and got a few results behind us, we know that we can dine at the top table. Lads are really starting to back themselves now and we're playing with a bit of swagger. It's great.

"I presume it's great for the supporters to watch and even watching back the game, the last few minutes 'The Fields of Athenry' was ringing out. With four or five minutes to go, that doesn't happen often now at Croke Park.

"We're in bonus territory now, the goal at the start of the year was to win a Leinster final, and to get over the semi-final was great, and we're really looking forward to the All-Ireland final now."

When tough questions were posed by Cork in the first half of the penultimate round at Croke Park, Galway stayed cool. "We found ourselves in similar positions during the league," Morrissey responds.

"Even looking back to the Kildare game, the Wexford game, we were down a good few points, double digits points at some stages. We stuck to the game plan, we never really panicked and brought ourselves back into it.

"I thought we showed great character to bring ourselves back to within a point of Cork before half-time. It gave us a good platform then for the second half."

The emergence of an exciting crop of young players, who will feature in Sunday's decider against Limerick, bodes well for the future too. "You saw Jason Rabbitte, he was unbelievable leading the line up there at the front on his own," Morrissey says.

"A lad of 19 or 20 years of age to be doing that is crazy. We're really looking forward to seeing what he can do in the next few weeks and even for the years to come.

"You've Cillian Trayers in the backline, Aaron Niland, and a few lads in the background lurking in the wings, the likes of Cullen Killeen and Seán Murphy, lads that are unbelievable hurlers for their clubs, colleges, and schools down through the years.

"We're really looking forward to seeing what they can do over the years to come, too."