GALWAY manager Padraic Joyce has not dismissed the notion of ongoing involvement for former Donegal manager Jim McGuinness with the Tribesmen.
McGuinness and Joyce were friends going back to their days at IT Tralee in the 1990s, when they won a Sigerson Cup in 1998.
“He’s been there, he’s done it and he’s very relevant to GAA because he’s won it as a manager himself so I just thought it was a perfect fit,” Joyce said this morning.
“It was a no-brainer for me to be honest. It didn’t just fall out of the sky.
“I’m always looking to do what I can for the players.
“My job as Galway manager is to make sure that my players are the best prepared that I possibly can give them and I just felt at this time that we needed a bit of a surge of something and the mental aspect of the game is huge nowadays so I just felt that around the country, in my eyes he’s the best performance coach in the country.
“He’s a qualified professional performance coach and I felt at the time that we needed the mental aspect of the game to kind of get an extra bonus into the players because there’s a lot more to training a team than just out on the pitch and just kicking points or blocking and defending.
“There’s other aspects to it so Jim brought a different element yesterday and the lads enjoyed the session as I did.”
Galway are top of Division 1 on eight points as the 2020 Allianz League rolls back to action this weekend, when they face Mayo.
All-Ireland semi-finalists in 2018, Galway are gearing up for a Connacht semi-final against Sligo in November.
When pressed on further involvement for the Glenties man, Joyce certainly did not pour cold water on the suggestion when he said: “It’s like when you sample a new brand of something, you’ll taste it and see what it’s like and if you don’t like it you might go somewhere else and get something different but we’ll see how it goes down.
“We loved it, he was very good, yeah.
“The session only took place yesterday at two o’clock and it was over at four so we need to do an analysis of the session and feedback from the players and see what way it’s working.”
McGuinness was relieved of his duties as head coach of Charlotte Independence last summer.
Since leaving the Donegal hot seat after the 2014 All-Ireland final loss to Kerry, McGuinness has worked in soccer.
He had been a Performance Consultant at Celtic since 2012 and was assistant coach Chinese Super League side Beijing Sinobo Guoan.
The role at Charlottee was his first managerial role in soccer, but his tenure came to an abrupt end after just one win in 14 games.
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