Shane O'Neill is poised to become the next Galway senior hurling manager.
O’Neill looks to have seen off competition from fellow Limerick man Ciaran Carey and Clare native Louis Mulqueen in the race to succeed Micheal Donoghue, who surprisingly resigned in August.
Mulqueen, who manages the Liam Mellows side that take on St Thomas’s in Sunday’s Galway senior hurling final, was also in the running for the Clare job only to withdraw, allowing Brian Lohan to take charge.
O’Neill has an impressive CV at club level having managed his native Na Piarsaigh to an All-Ireland club title as they became the first team from Limerick to win the Tommy Moore Cup in 2016.
He also guided them to a second All-Ireland final last year only to lose to holders Cuala after a replay. He stepped down after that having won two county titles, two Munsters and that All-Ireland.
The ex-Limerick hurler will be the first outside appointment in Galway since John McIntyre more than a decade ago, albeit the Tipperary native had long been a resident in the county and was intimately familiar with the club scene.
Since making the All-Ireland breakthrough with Cyril Farrell in 1980, Galway haven’t tended to opt for outside appointments with the only other one in the interim, Clare’s Ger Loughnane, overseeing a disappointing two-year tenure that ended in 2008.
However, with a number of local candidates making it clear that they weren’t prepared to work with the current county board, they were always likely to look beyond the county boundary for Donoghue’s successor.
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