Galway are looking to book a place in the final of the Allianz Football League as they take on Kerry in a decisive round 7 clash at Pearse Stadium on Sunday.
In what is a repeat of last year’s All-Ireland final, the Tribesmen are looking to go one step further against the reigning champions, with a place in the Division 1 final against Mayo up for grabs.
Galway go into the game in second place on eight points, while Kerry sit joint third with Roscommon and Tyrone on six points, which means that Pádraic Joyce’s side just need to avoid defeat to the Kingdom to advance.
Four points was the difference between the sides at Croke Park last July when Kerry lifted the Sam Maguire following their 0-20 to 0-16 victory.
And while there have been several suggestions this year that counties are happy to miss out on league silverware due to the proximity of the start of the championship, Galway are firmly focused on remaining in contention as long as possible.
The league final will take place on the first weekend of April, and while the Connacht championship starts on the following weekend, Galway are idle as they received a bye into the semi-finals.
"We definitely would like an extra game, and it would be great to get a game early in Croke Park," said Galway midfielder, Paul Conroy.
"We haven’t any Division 1 league medals in our dressing room and we don’t have the challenge of being out the week after, so we’re just trying to go out and win every game and improve our performance. So obviously we have a massive one coming this weekend against Kerry."
Conroy feels that this Galway side have recovered well from a slow start to the league campaign and benefitted from having a week off before finding a better consistency throughout the next four games.
Galway only had one point from their opening two games, drawing with Mayo, before losing to Roscommon, but have since beaten Tyrone, Monaghan and Armagh, while picking up another point in a draw with Donegal.
Conroy believes that the quest for continual improvement is what drives this Galway side on and paying attention to the little details is where the edge could come from in the upcoming championship
"It’s (the league) been good, the first couple of games were probably a little bit up and down so the draw with Mayo the first day out, then we lost to Roscommon, and there was a break for a week and we came back and it has been good in fairness. A little bit inconsistent early on but the last couple of games have been very positive.
"It’s to try and push on, to try and find new players and strengthen up the squad. Then it’s to try and improve things all the time, the small percentages. There’s probably an awful lot of teams at the same level who would fancy themselves going far in the championship and just because we got to the last two last year doesn’t mean we’re going to get there this year.
"So it is important we keep minding our own corner and driving things on yourselves."
Conroy has been one of the main driving forces of this Galway side over the past two years and he is happy with his form ahead of the Connacht and All-Ireland championships.
And having eventually watched the All-Ireland final back, he feels that the best approach to this weekend’s rerun is to focus on the day and leave the emotions outside of the occasion.
"I saw it over Christmas," said Conroy, when asked had he watched last year’s decider.
"It’s hard to watch back, but I suppose you just have to take the learnings from it, really. Try and go again, because you can’t be feeling sorry for yourself or thinking about last year.
"I was a bit late going back to the group this year, unfortunately our club [St James'] were in relegation last year so we didn’t finish up until mid-November time, so I just took a couple of weeks off.
"Even mentally because we went straight from an All-Ireland to club to relegation, which is not where you want to be, but we got out of that anyway.
"Staying fresh mentally is key and you saw an awful lot of lads talking about that in the last couple of weeks, so I probably had to catch up on some training and that, but I’ve been enjoying it the last couple of weeks."
But Conroy is now firmly in game mode as the fixture that could define their league campaign looms.
"If you take your eye off the ball in terms of the performance and the actual game itself, you ultimately won’t be doing what you should be doing on the pitch.
"So we’ll just focus on the day and try put in as good a performance as we can and work on the things we learned this week and maybe didn’t do that great last week."
