It was fitting in its own way that Joe Canning almost gifted the public one last dummy handpass at the very hour of his leaving. A day of sponsored media duties last Wednesday began with an interview on Off the Ball AM where he pulled first time on some enquiries about retirement.
“It is funny people want to retire you at some stage,” he said. “I haven’t made [any decision] yet.”
So that was that, right? The print and online journalists teed up for a call with Canning later in the day were already talking. The only serious question had been dealt with. What was the point in logging on?
In 2008, before he even hurled a single second as a senior intercounty player with Galway, Canning was already the face for two major brands and limited most of his media engagements throughout his career to these highly-controlled, largely colourless affairs. When the mask briefly slipped between the drawn 2012 All-Ireland final and replay and Canning wondered aloud about Henry Shefflin’s influence on referees, the hostile reaction ensured any remotely contentious thoughts were subsequently canned and left on the shelf. The odds before last Wednesday of Canning retiring in an interview? Remote.
While the journalists were having conversations, Canning was also talking to his brother Frank and realising the charade could not continue. The Galway players had known about his decision since Saturday, so did his family. Issuing any more denials only risked confusion. Going quietly was never an option, so Canning took one last hit. “That’s it,” he told the journalists. “I’m done.”
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He was stepping away on his terms, as he always said he would. He would not be returning as a pundit or a social media expert, he said, and he would keep hurling with Portumna. A quick inventory of his physical condition last week reflected the ongoing toll on his body. This summer alone he dealt with a torn hamstring undiagnosed for three weeks. He had a partial tear in his thumb and a finger injury. His heel was also at him. Last Saturday he took a bang that fractured his wrist — resulting in a red card for Conor Gleeson — that left Canning relying on paracetamol and strapping to play on.
There was also the eight minutes he spent motionless on the pitch in Croke Park during last year’s All-Ireland semi-final against Limerick after a clash as he bore down on goal. In 2019 he was stretchered off during a league semi-final against Waterford after another heavy tackle. In 2016 he tore his hamstring off the bone and almost did not get back. In 2017, his signature year, he barely trained between July and September minding a knee injury.
It is also fitting that he leaves Galway precisely as he wished: still vital, still relevant. Taking Shefflin’s record as hurling’s all-time top championship scorer last Saturday would not have cost Canning a thought, but there was something poetic about overtaking Shefflin in his final acts as a Galway hurler. He had spent less than a year hurling with Galway when the comparisons with Shefflin began. The night in 2009 they met for the first time in championship combat set the tone for the expectations on Canning that followed.
Canning outscored Shefflin 2-9 to 0-10, including a marvellous goal, touched the ball just nine times in open play and was fouled three times for frees he converted. The difference between them, though, was clear.
Shefflin took charge of the game that night when Kilkenny needed. Canning could not impose himself that way. Shefflin was a ten-year veteran by then and immediate comparison was unfair, but his ability to shape games beyond scoring illustrated what Galway expected Canning to become.
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Did he get there? Eventually. He hurled as a boy with the power of Samson and the delicate, feathery touch of Michelangelo, scoring 2-2 in the 2004 All-Ireland minor final when he was two months short of his 16th birthday, already performing miracles and coping reluctantly with a level of expectation only attached in living memory to David Clifford.
Galway manager Conor Hayes considered him for an All-Ireland senior quarter-final in 2006 but left him with the minors as he attempted to win his third All-Ireland minor medal. He finally stepped up in 2008, striking 2-12 in a qualifier against Cork as a stunning announcement of his arrival as a ready-made great.
Other elements of that game equally set the tone for the future. For all Canning’s brilliance that evening, Galway still lost to Cork. In 2006 he scored 1-16 in an epic Fitzgibbon final but Limerick IT lost in extra time. He was incredible for Portumna in defeat in the 2010 All-Ireland club final. For many years teams often needed Canning to be more than spectacular.
His celestial hurling ability was able to stand that strain, but his natural personality was shy and quiet. He was reared in the shelter of a big family, kept a small circle of friends and was slow to trust anyone beyond that. Sometimes that pressure to be all things for Galway took away from what he ended up delivering. Although winning five All Stars in ten years was testament to the standards he set, he could also swing during games between incredible brilliance and anonymity.
In the 2012 Leinster final Canning scored 1-10 and was mapped picking up ball in nine different positional areas of the field between his own half-back line and the Galway full-forward line. He also electrified the All-Ireland final that year with a goal after eight minutes but did not touch the ball again in open play after 38 minutes.
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He was handed the captaincy in 2014 and had it taken away in 2015. That knocked him. His parents were both diagnosed with cancer that year and made successful recoveries, but the experience changed his perspective on hurling’s place in his life.
Galway were also evolving a better team around him. By 2015 a forward line was being assembled capable of sharing the scoring burden. In 2016 Micheál Donoghue stuck Canning at centre-forward, ending any talk about his optimum position for Galway.
Canning became a leader on more manageable terms, still scoring heavily but creating plenty for players capable of making the most of him. His performance in the 2017 All-Ireland semi-final against Tipperary was rightly celebrated last week among his finest afternoons, capturing the journey Canning had made the same way those pendulous performances were often a microcosm of the first part of his career. The immediate aftermath of his winning score was captured in a photograph by James Crombie, a glorious rendering of Canning’s finest hour and all the years poured into that day.
Canning is looking at the ball soaring between the posts, his eyes alive with happiness along with thousands in the stands behind him. In that image lay all the magnificence and agony he carried his entire life as a genius talent: a perfectly sculpted hurling specimen, his strike clean and crisp from an impossible spot, but human and vulnerable too, willing the ball over the bar to achieve victory and save him and Galway from being thrown once again on the rack.
That year ended with Canning in possession of all the trinkets traditionally used to weigh greatness: provincial and All-Ireland medals, All Star, Hurler of the Year. His body was battered — Canning had not trained fully between July and September — but his status was undiminished.
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But it was all window dressing to Canning’s mammoth achievement of maximising his incredible talent. The Friday after the 2017 final he visited the small, two-teacher school at home in Gortanumera, a couple of miles outside Portumna. There was maybe 30 people there to welcome him. His people.
“I found myself getting very emotional,” he said in the Irish Independent in 2018. “They’re the people who shaped me as a person. In many ways, they’re who I am.”
He returns to them immortalised as an all-time great. Happy, too, that there is nothing left to say.