CONNACHT SFC SEMI-FINAL GALWAY v MAYO: KEITH DUGGANtalks to the veteran Mountbellew stalwart who has experienced the best and worst of times in the maroon of Galway

THE BEST of times and worst of times: Joe Bergin has seen them all tinted in maroon. He came through in what must have seemed a blessed time to the generations of Galway footballers who had soldiered from the late 1960s through to the late 1990s, emerging from the significant shadow of Kevin Walsh to play in the All-Ireland final defeat to Kerry in 2000 before winning a medal the following September. He had yet to turn 20.

“The young lads coming through to fill the shoes,” Walsh said in the dressingroom that afternoon, referring to Bergin and Kieran Fitzgerald, the copper -haired defender from Corofin who finished the year with an All-Star.

And now? “Fitzy” has departed the scene, finally succumbing to the debilitating back injuries. He left in the midst of a bleak league run for Galway and his retirement fuelled the inevitable rumours about discontent in the Galway squad. Now, Joe Bergin is, by his own admission, one of the grand old men of the Galway team. He isn’t quite sure how this has happened but it has.

There have been some good times along the way: Bergin added an under-21 medal in 2002 to compliment the Celtic Cross he won in his first full season and four Connacht championship medals. But because he is so associated with the optimism and confidence of the years when Galway were expected guests in the third Sunday of September, Bergin was likely to be one of the first singled out on the days of crashing disappointment.

His style – he is rangy and athletic and such a smooth ball-player that he stands out in the crowd of smaller, muscle-bound and frantic men – meant that everything he did on a field, good and bad, got noticed.

In the best of times, the Mountbellew man seemed to embody everything that was special and distinctive about Galway football. And because of that, as Galway slowly drifted outside the elite tier of realistic contenders, he was one of the first they would look to criticise.

Joe Bergin has heard the shrill delight of Galway men thrilled that they were witnessing the second coming of the 1960s team. And he was there too on the worst of days: losing to Donegal in the All-Ireland quarter final of 2003, to Tyrone a year later, to Westmeath in front of a shocked crowd in Salthill in 2006. He stopped owing Galway anything a long time ago. But you should hear him now talking about Sunday. He is as excited as a kid promised his first start.

“You do question it after every season,” he says of the decision to keep on playing, sitting in the lounge area of Galway’s training facility in Loughgeorge. It is an impressive place, located just off the N17; commuters heading home see the floodlights in the drizzle all through the winter.

“Because they are long seasons. No matter how far you go in the All-Ireland championship, you are back into the club as soon as it ends. Since I have come in, the commitment seems to be worse and worse every year.

“I missed the first game of the league but I was training non- stop. But the further you go in the league, getting closer to the championship and getting away from the rotten weather, it does keep you going. And to be quite honest, I would be lost without it. I know no other life. I am as excited now as I would have been playing Mayo back in 2002, which was the first time I played against them.

“About a year ago, I didn’t know how long more I would be playing after an Achilles and cruciate injury. But right now I feel good so you take it day by day and year by year. But I am enjoying it as much as I ever did.”

He is not a firebrand, never bothering with the showboating in-you-face gestures or stoking up the crowd with fist-pumping. Sometimes he kicks points from distance which some power and graceful ease that you can almost hear the collective thought in the crowd: Why doesn’t he do that six times a game? He is not a take-the-game by the scruff of the neck kind of player although he has often been the dominant player in his sector.

Managers are sometimes rendered uncertain by Bergin’s versatility: they want and need his presence in midfield but then instantly miss the options he brings to the half forward line and vice-versa. He has spent the latter half of his career shuttling between both lines but in recent times has become the permanent partner in a busy Galway midfield sector.

In the league this spring, he went about the task of leading Galway teams through terrible results against Monaghan, Down and Mayo in a calm, methodical kind of way. You would see him answering reporter’s questions in the tunnel afterwards: truthful in his assessment but never panicking or casting blame elsewhere or sounding despairing.

“It wasn’t a panic,” he says now. “It is not nice when you are losing games and the Mayo game was a disappointment losing it as we did. But we had to keep it in perspective. We were missing a lot of players and we are a team that can’t afford to miss that many. Tomás came in and he was trying to find out what he wanted to do with the team. So we just had to knuckle down and keep at it. We knew it would turn. And in fairness, it did.

“It began to turn against Cork – we didn’t get a win but we put up a fine performance. Then beat Armagh and got the draw with Dublin. Look it, it wasn’t a nice time early in the year. You don’t go out to lose games. But Tomás instilled in us that we had to be patient. We weren’t going to get it right over night.”

Some evenings, he will turn up for training still feeling the resident aches and bruises from the previous session. The younger players – the U-21 bunch just brought in – will be bouncing. Quietly, he envies that recovery.

“Keeps you on your toes,” he grins. “You say to yourself: ‘Okay Joe, need to up your standards here.’ You don’t want to be pushed aside.”

He is at that stage that the select group of players who stay first choice for a full decade always reach: lamenting the more carefree days of the game as it used to be. Bergin lists out the peripheral specialities that make up his football routine now. Diet sheets from nutritionists. Yoga. Core Work. Rehab. Fitness coaches. Weights. All are tailored programmes. “Everything done to the Nth degree,” he says.

And he isn’t complaining. But when Galway won its last All-Ireland, this new place was still in the planning stages and they got ready for training in a kind of corrugated shed and were fed there afterwards.

“Sometimes we went out, ran a few 50s and a few 100s and played ball. There are times you look around and feel that it is all OTT now. But it is the way it has gone. You see the set-ups in Tipperary and Kilkenny or the Dublin and Kerry teams: professional systems applied to amateurs.”

Without that support, he may not be playing now. He admits he is learning – and being taught – how to manage his body a bit better now. When he thinks about the trajectory of Galway football since 2001, he has no magic answer or single reason as to why the county has not made it past a quarter-final since.

All he knows is that the U-21 successes of 2002 and 2005 and 2011, while encouraging, do not automatically translate into senior wins. “And then we lost a lot of those 1998 and 2001 teams at once. Ja Fallon, Kevin Walsh, Tomás Mannion, Derek Savage, Michael Donnellan: they went in a relatively short period of time. And it is hard to replace players like those. But I think people in Galway now know that it doesn’t happen automatically.”

By modern standards, this is a subdued build-up to the local derby. Recent games between the Galway and Mayo have been exceptionally tight but this time, there is a sense of uncertainty in both counties about where the teams are at. Mayo’s fright in London has prompted fairly radical surgery to James Horan’s first championship team.

Galway, meanwhile, will begin their campaign with Seán Armstrong in recuperation and Michael Meehan tentatively removed from the long-term injury list but unlikely to play. In addition, the long lay-off means nobody in Galway can say for sure if the team that plays tomorrow will be different from the league team. One thing Bergin can say is that the new manager has not tried to impose a superstructure on the team.

“In fairness to Tomás, he hasn’t tried to change us. You have to play to your strengths and obviously Galway’s style is attacking football – to move the ball as fast as we can and as long as we can. We try to avoid the short hand-pass where we can. And Tomás has tried to work to our strengths.

“We know we have the forwards to kick a good score. Our record in the last number of years in scores conceded is not good. We are conscious of that. And Tomás has worked hard with our defence, particularly in the 10 weeks we have had off.”

It is a critical day for the big two. Roscommon have been the most consistent team in this part of the country for the past 12 months. Galway and Mayo are both trying to find their bearings again. As ever, they will use one another as an accurate compass. Bergin looks surprised at the idea that this particular version of Galway and Mayo does not seem as big as it once was.

“The players don’t think that way. I don’t know how many people will be down in McHale Park but that doesn’t dilute the significance for us. We aren’t guaranteed to meet in the championship and we haven’t played each other for two years. No, it is always a huge game.”