Keith Duggangets the views of former Offaly manager Michael Bond and Galway city hurling coach Gerry Spelman on Ger Loughnane's reign

Another All-Ireland quarter-final weekend and people are in the dark about Galway hurling. Little in the performances of the National League or the qualifying round of the championship suggested Galway had the potency or the physical and moral fibre to defeat the title favourites, Kilkenny, or even the firebrands of this summer, Waterford.

Galway hurling people will gather in Croke Park this afternoon caught between the warmth of the memories of the trigger-happy semi-final of 2005 when Galway outgunned Kilkenny and the fear another of those brilliant, efficient and heartless lectures the Cats inflicted on Galway in 2004 and 2006 awaits them.

Ger Loughnane's arrival in Galway promised to shake matters up in a county that has become a sleeping giant. The Feakle man took a brave decision in stepping down from the untouchable heights of the broadcast booth to try his hand with a hurling dynasty that had become a troubling enigma. Not only was he managing his neighbouring county, he was tampering with the legend he left behind with Clare.

Noel Lane and Conor Hayes shipped serious criticism during their periods in charge but both led their teams to All-Ireland finals, losing to Tipperary and Cork respectively by no worse than a goal.

For all the fretting, Galway have not been that far away.

Loughnane's task is to inspire or bully them towards those few extra, priceless scores and to an All-Ireland. The Galway County Board made the correct decision in appointing him and it was evident as early as last October, when the training purges began, that the extended panel were willing to hurl on hot coals to impress him. But in late July, the prevailing mood is one of puzzlement. There has been grumbling about the fact the exhaustive auditions for new players have yielded just one definite new face, goalkeeper Colm Callinan.

The unorthodox team selection minutes before Galway's crucial qualifying match against Clare in Ennis bemused fans. And Loughnane's inflammatory outbursts before that match and in anticipating today's quarter-final alarmed many Galway hurling people for whom the lack of a senior title since 1988 means silence is the best policy.

Yet, nobody can be sure. There is a school of thought Loughnane made a mistake in trying to apply with the Galway hurlers the blueprint that worked so wonderfully in Clare a decade ago. Equally, there exists the feeling everything Loughnane has said and done up to now has been a ruse to try to get his team on to the field without anyone knowing what to expect.

"Well, most people are going to know what to expect because everyone is familiar with the players. So Brian Cody won't be in any way caught out in that sense," clarified Michael Bond during the week.

Bond inherited an Offaly team in chaos during the summer of 1998 and transformed them so effectively they finished the season as champions. He knows something about the capacity of teams to reinvent themselves.

"But if I was in Brian Cody's shoes, I would be worried nonetheless," he continues. "Because those Galway players can hurl. My belief is if they can hold Kilkenny for the first 20 minutes, they can contest the winning of this match.

"Nobody would question their fitness. A constant problem as I see it is the ball coming in from the half-back line has been too slow. Damien Hayes and Niall Healy are not being played right - these fellas need lightning ball. I don't know what the problem is - although I do think the club game in Galway has largely gone away from ground hurling."

When Bond was appointed by Offaly after a players' coup led to the abrupt departure of Babs Keating, he saw his chief responsibility as merely motivating the players into hurling again. He had a light touch and the Offaly boys, notoriously independent of mind, responded to him.

"The hurlers were there," he says. "I gelled with them and they gelled with me. And that Offaly team was great for first-time hurling."

The task facing Loughnane is more complex. Since Cyril Farrell fielded the formidable team of the 1980s full of brawny hurlers, Galway have become celebrated for producing devilishly talented and attractive young hurlers with one fatal flaw: they were light. They swept all before them at underage level and then struggled against heftier defences at senior level. In the last years of his career, big Joe Rabbitte looked like Gulliver in Lilliput at centre-half forward. Gerry Spelman, who captained Clarinbridge to All-Ireland success five years ago, is the Galway city hurling coach. He concedes around a decade ago there was a tendency to streamline youngsters with all the skills as the future of the game in the county. "There were probably bigger guys then with potential but who would have needed more coaching, who could have become the big, powerhouse-type senior players that a county needs. The result then was that we were left with a lot of similar players - very skilful but light.

"And there is a perception still that Galway is a light and not very physical team. But if you look at what Ger is working with: he has made a real prospect out of John Lee. Iarla Tannian has power and speed. Tony Óg (Regan) is strong. Eugene (Cloonan) wouldn't be small. Mark Kerins is a strong lad. So it is not like we have to worry about getting blown away physically."

Loughnane was determined that would not happen. At club training with St Thomas's, Michael Bond noticed how muscular Richie Murray had become. The Galway training regime was punishing and there were times when Bond feared Loughnane was trying to transform the Galway players into something they could not become: the Clare team circa 1995-2000.

As for Galway's defeat by Clare in early July, Bond was not especially worried, reasoning that while Clare are nothing like the force of a decade ago, they are a hardy, proud team with All-Ireland medallists in their ranks. On a narrowed pitch against a tenacious team, Galway lost a match they might have won. Their touch was not great and the selection process was one of Loughnane's eccentric surprises, and still they were in with a shout.

Bond went to watch the game against Antrim, and though the match ceased to be a contest in the second half, there was a smoothness about the first touch of the Galway players again. He saw no reason to be despondent. If he had a wish, it would be that Ollie Canning - "still the best hurler in Galway" - would come out of retirement.

Bond believes Canning's surprise decision to quit the intercounty game is the chief reason Loughnane has experimented so liberally in the full-back line; that the entire division has been disturbed by Canning's departure.

The bitter aftermath of the Portumna-Loughrea championship final last autumn seemed to give substance to the theory the club scene in Galway was too parochial to facilitate a harmonious county game. One popular rumour, alluded to by Loughnane in a local-newspaper interview, was that county minor players hardly spoke to one another at school because of club differences. "You hear that kind of stuff but it is nonsense," says Spelman.

With Canning having opted out, Kerril Wade is the latest minor sensation upon whose shoulders much responsibility rests.

So many have been the quality players in the county over the last decade that simply staying in the first team is a sizeable task. Two years ago, Ger Farragher was the chief free-taker and finished the year as an All Star. This year, with Eugene Cloonan preferred at full forward by Loughnane, Farragher has been a peripheral figure.

There is a new sensation in Galway almost every summer, and frequently they are tasked with heavy responsibilities. The Galway scene is full of where-are-they-now stories of quality hurlers, from Aidan Poinard to Rory Gantley. Even Daragh Coen, a deadly free-taker and a clubmate of Spelman's who shone in the Clarinbridge championship year, had a horrendous experience against Waterford in 1998.

He went into the match as Galway's chief threat, missed a penalty, was withdrawn early and was blamed as one of the culprits in a 1-20 to 1-10 defeat. When Galway qualified for an All-Ireland final three years later, he was not on the team.

"But Daragh was still on the team the next season and I think he had a fine game against Clare," argues Spelman. "I don't think Galway have discarded players all that prematurely. Maybe that happened in the early 1990s during the knock-out system.

"In 1993, for instance, we played Kilkenny in the All-Ireland final. That year, PJ Delaney would have had his ups and downs through the league and the Leinster championship but Kilkenny kept him on. They persisted with him. And then in the All-Ireland final, PJ just exploded against us. He was excellent. But the point is that Kilkenny had four of five games to get PJ that experience. At that time, the Galway guys selected knew that their whole year was riding on the All-Ireland semi-final. It was severe pressure."

That Loughnane went looking for players is beyond doubt. (Rory and Joe Gantley from Beagh featured in a December challenge against Beagh, as did the 1999 minor captain John Culkin, another teenager yet to stake a claim at senior level.)

What Spelman believes Galway need more than anything is a leader on the field. John Lee looks the obvious candidate. He has flourished under Loughnane.

The regularity with which Kilkenny win All-Irelands means there is a virtual monarchy and the passing of power is always controlled. Cody's brilliance, Spelman believes, has been in keeping veterans like John Power, Andy Comerford and DJ involved just long enough to ensure the next generation of leaders - Shefflin, Tommy Walsh, Noel Hickey - were ready.

The country knows what to expect from Kilkenny. Galway are, as ever, cloaked in mystery. But one thing is for sure: when it comes to facing the black-and-amber men, Galway folk would much rather have Loughnane with them on the sideline than looking down at them from television land.