In the winter of 2014, Kevin Walsh was on the hunt. Hunting for footballers. He made a list, checked it twice, and then started putting in the calls.
Walsh was appointed Galway manager in September of that year and he had made it his mission to trawl the county for players. He'd won two All-Irelands as a midfield powerhouse. He'd grown up with songs and stories of the icons who'd won the three-in-a-row in the 1960s.
So Walsh had a certain idea of Galway, and where they stood in the football world. So he was rocked back on his heels by what happened when he worked through his list. READ MORE: Donegal v Galway recap and result as Pádraic Joyce's Tribe reach the All-Ireland football final READ MORE: Paul McGinley: Jim McGuinness reminds me of Taylor Swift Walsh revealed that 52 footballers had turned him down.
That's right. More than three full teams told him they didn't want to play for Galway. That's where they were 10 years ago.
. For Galway, the heaviest burden was often having to play in 'The Galway Way', whatever that meant. Football changed but Galway were under pressure to stay true to their traditions.
A team full of talent lost to Sligo and Wexford in the same summer. Galway won their second All-Ireland in four years in 2001 and then went 16 years without winning a game of any kind in Croke Park. How do you make sense of that? Padraic Joyce succeeded Walsh as Galway manager, and he has a great love of his county's traditions.
He made that clear in his very first inter.