Give it socks brother.
Having represented Galway for eight years, Davy Glennon has been there and done that, took the belts and shipped the knocks, but he’s embracing the role of supportive older brother now.
Most of the time anyway.
The Mullagh man transferred to Westmeath after he was let-go from the Galway panel in 2020 so, in that instance where the counties meet in the Leinster round-robin, it really is a case of every man for himself.
But that anomaly aside, Davy is watching on proudly. He looks at the Galway senior hurling team and, with that extra connection there, he hopes for the best for his younger brother Ronan.
Ronan has slotted in well to the Galway midfield since his debut in 2022 and modestly, his older brother Davy says that Ronan puts even more into the game than he did. So watching on this Saturday, as Ronan and the Galway senior hurlers take on Limerick in the All-Ireland semi-final, Davy will be thinking about days gone by.
Days when he was playing in big games for Galway. Days when he was pucking around in the back garden with his younger brother, who idolised him as a Galway senior hurler.
“He has a great work-rate, on and off the field,” says Davy, “and his commitment is probably something that he had, more than I had when I was playing.
“So that’s what’s getting him to where he is today.”
The brothers actually came up against one another earlier in the year when Westmeath met Galway in the National Hurling League. That was a memory he will treasure forever, though he wishes they were on the same team rather than against each other.
“That’s life,” says Davy.
“I played against him in the League. That was unusual, it was a great memory to have because I don’t think it’s happened before, Galway pushed on and beat us a nice bit but there was a great bit of healthy banter around the family all week.
“There was eight years between us and looking back on it I suppose, when I was 20, and he was 12, he would probably have been looking at me breaking onto the Galway senior team and that was his dream.
“So to have a brother that was there would have helped him.
“All you want to do is play at that age. In one way, you’d be disappointed that you never got to hurl with him, like the Mannions and the Burkes, as long as he’s going well and getting on, that’s the main thing.”
All that being said, as is the way of the modern inter-county player, Davy says that he doesn’t ask Ronan about the goings-on in the Galway dressing room because he knows he wouldn’t be told.
“He’s a very quiet personality, different to me.
“And I guess when we were coming up against each other this year, that played a part too.
“I know when I was playing, I wouldn’t have liked people asking me different things about the set-up, because whatever is said inside the camp, it’s kept inside.
“You don’t relay it even to family, friends or girlfriends. So I wouldn’t ask him because I wouldn’t be told.”
“But in terms of advice. In the last couple of weeks, he was taken off against Dublin, he didn’t get a look-in against Kilkenny which he was very disappointed with, but he’s a younger brother of mine so I would have checked in with him, to tell him to keep the head up and keep positive, and to let him know that his chance would come.
“I would have told him it’s not nice to be sitting on the bench looking out, but told him the chance would come. And I think he did take that chance against Tipperary.”
And now he’ll be hoping to take another one against Limerick…
