HARD to believe now as their senior team languishes once more in the depths, but in 2007, Carlow were among the best minor sides in Ireland.
And when they played Galway in the All-Ireland quarter-final in Tullamore, it was hard not to spin out to O’Connor Park for a look, as it was another chance to watch Brendan Murphy, just about the best footballer at U18 level we ever saw, play another game of ball.
It was there that we discovered Murphy had competition for that accolade; there was a teen monster in the opposing midfield. Its name was Paul Conroy, and it looked like it could as easily fight for the super-middleweight world title or swat planes in the next King Kong remake as field ball and fend off tacklers as the Tribesmen eased to victory.
Galway and their boy-mountain won that All-Ireland and Conroy showed enough outstanding football ability to make you certain he would be a star even when his physical advantage dissipated a little at the top level.
His underage days had finished in 2011, but it didn’t matter, as another fine Galway team emerged to claim national silverware, this time at U21 level.
This crowd also had strength around the middle, with Thomas Flynn and Fiontan O Curraoin, and silk up front. Mark Hehir finished with seven points and Danny Cummins with four when they walloped Cavan in the final at Croke Park by 10 points.
It was the biggest winning margin in an U21 decider since Michael Meehan and Sean Armstrong took Down for six goals in 2004.
Just last year, Galway did it again. Freakishly, Flynn and O Curraoin were still underage and up front was a new batch of gorgeously gifted footballers, led by the free-scoring St Jarlath’s alumni Shane Walsh and Ian Burke.
They made much-hyped Kildare look foolishly inefficient in the semi-final before stifling a yawn and resisting the urge to smoke cigars as they solidly outplayed favourites Cork in the decider at the Gaelic Grounds.
It is a hell of a lot of talent, a gilt-coated feneration, and it is not all that Galway have going for them. They have experienced defenders in the likes of Finian Hanley and Garreth Bradshaw and they added former Kildare star James Kavanagh, a forward of great vision, for this season.
Their manager, Alan Mulholland, looked the perfect fit when he took over in late 2011, having overseen the 2007 and 2011 triumphs.
All of which brings us to perhaps football’s greatest current unsolved mystery: how on earth have Galway taken all this raw material and ended up with a team that almost lost at home to Waterford last year? A team that slumped to a 17-point mauling against Mayo, their worst defeat to their fiercest rivals in more than a century? A team that was fortunate in the extreme not to be relegated to the third flight in this spring’s national league?
There have been bright spots in Mulholland’s two-and-a-half seasons in charge, but they have been immediately followed by greater gloom. In his first championship match, they trounced Roscommon, with Hehir and Conroy looking the business, only to inexplicably lose to Sligo the next day.
They emerged from the Waterford embarrassment to give an honest afternoon’s toil that was almost good enough to eliminate Cork in the fourth round of the qualifiers last year.
It looked as if a corner had been turned. Galway were many people’s tip — okay, they were my tip — to thrive in Division Two of the league this year, but they made a mockery of that, pushing the self-destruct button to the point where they somehow lost by 15 points to Laois, a stain that avoiding relegation has not erased.
We are not particularly close to the Galway football scene but we don’t have to be to tell you that their talented footballers are not working hard enough. The scoreline from the Mayo game last summer tells you that, for there is no way that a 17-point gap should exist between this Galway team and anyone.
And yet, when you look at that underage record, better than any county except Dublin and perhaps Cork, you still feel that an unexpected relapse into forgotten good form could come at any moment.
That while one can’t rely on Galway to have a long summer, one can’t bet the mortgage against it either. You also couldn’t tell London that they don’t have a chance of their most famous upset in history in Ruislip on Sunday.
Which Galway will show up in north-west London? We haven’t the first idea. If that’s unsatisfactory, we can only point out that Mulholland and his men almost certainly don’t have a clue what the answer is either.
