Fitzmaurice return adds mystery to Connacht 

It was only eight years ago, but the summer of 2018 already feels like another age. The arguments were different, the geopolitical mood was different and, in Gaelic football at least, so was the landscape.

Across the water, the United Kingdom was attempting to leave Europe without appearing entirely sure where the exits were, with Prime Minister Theresa May in the midst of the Chequers crisis. Meanwhile, Ireland had just voted to repeal the Eighth Amendment, while President Donald Trump, still in his first term, was barrelling into a trade war with China.

And then there was Newbridge or Nowhere..

A few weeks after that irascible afternoon in Newbridge, Éamonn Fitzmaurice stood down as Kerry manager. He had been there six seasons, won an All-Ireland title, won six Munster titles in succession and decided, at 41 years of age, that it was time for somebody else to have a go.

He hadn’t stepped back into an intercounty area until last week when he was announced as the new Galway manager for 2027. And he returns to the game in a province that hardly needs another storyline.

Mayo will arrive into 2027 with Sam Maguire in the cupboard and without having been champions of Connacht since 2021. They have conquered the country while repeatedly failing to conquer their own backyard.

That will matter.

An All-Ireland changes the way a team walks into a room. It changes how opponents look at them, too. Every tackle comes with a little more spite, every crowd with a little more appetite. Mayo spent decades chasing the thing they finally caught this summer and, after all the noise and release that followed, the first challenge next year will be proving they have not mistaken arrival for completion.

A defeat in Connacht would puncture the mood quickly. The bunting would barely be down. Nothing ages faster in Irish sport than a summer of immortality.

Roscommon, meanwhile, have the Nestor Cup in their possession and a different problem. Winning Connacht is one thing. Convincing everybody that you belong permanently in the company of Mayo and Galway is another. They have spent years being capable of producing fine afternoons within the province. The next step is to deliver in Croke Park.

And then there is Galway.

For several seasons they have occupied that peculiar territory just off top of the podium. Too good to dismiss, too accomplished to patronise, too often standing close enough to the great prize to feel its heat. There comes a point when promise becomes expectation, and expectation eventually becomes a bill somebody has to pay.

That is the province Fitzmaurice has chosen to enter.

Mayo have finally reached the summit. Roscommon are trying to establish themselves on higher ground. Galway are still looking for the final few yards.

Connacht already had pressure; Fitzmaurice has added mystery.

He has not been brought in to sketch out a five-year plan or to wait patiently for a new generation to ripen. He has inherited a team that has already done the hard part: developed the players, endured the defeats, reached the latter stages, learned what the biggest days feel like.

Galway have lived in that territory for a while now. They have been close enough to the summit to know the view, but not close enough to plant a flag. Another good year will not carry the same weight it once did.

Which is why Fitzmaurice makes sense.

Still, he brings an element of uncertainty.

He will be nine years away from the championship sideline by the time next summer rolls around – that’s a long time by any metric. In the meantime, football has been stretched and pulled and argued over – it’s almost indistinguishable from the game he left in 2018. Structures have shifted. Innovations have emerged. The game has sped up, slowed down and then been legislated into another shape altogether.

Fitzmaurice, of course, has hardly spent those years in a monastery.

Through the Football Review Committee, he has been part of the conversation about what Gaelic football should become. But it will still take time to adjust to becoming an intercounty manager – and what it entails – once again.

That is what makes Galway so fascinating next year. Fitzmaurice is proven, but not current. And sport is particularly unsentimental on this point. Yesterday’s visionary is only ever three defeats away from becoming a man who ‘understood the old game’ but has now become a relic.

Galway, meanwhile, are experienced, but not fulfilled. Both arrive carrying reputations that will mean less and less once the championship begins.

Eight years is long enough for almost everything to look familiar and feel different.

The roads into Castlebar and Salthill and Roscommon are the same. The jerseys are the same colours. The spring light will fall across the same pitches. But the balance of the province has shifted more than a few times.

Fitzmaurice is not walking back into the Connacht of 2018, nor even into the same game. He is walking into a championship where Mayo carry the authority of All-Ireland champions, Roscommon carry the confidence of provincial winners, and Galway carry the oldest burden of all: the sense that time is beginning to creep away from them.

For Fitzmaurice, there will be no gentle reintroduction to intercounty football No long runway. No nostalgia tour.

There will only be spring and pressure and the cold test every returning manager must eventually face: whether reputation can still survive contact with the present.

Connacht hardly needed another storyline. Then, Fitzmaurice walked in.

Nobody yet knows what he will bring, whether the old instincts still hold, or whether eight years away has sharpened him or dated him. And that uncertainty may be the best thing about his return.

Connacht was already fascinating.

Now it has a mystery as well.