Download or read book Joe Canning written by Joe Canning and published by Gill & Macmillan Ltd. This book was released on 2024-10-10 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The youngest of seven children from a hurling-obsessed Portumna family, Joe Canning was steeped in the game from birth. Regarded as a prodigy from the moment he stepped onto the pitch as a boy, he burst onto the national radar aged just 19, scoring 2–12 for Galway in a narrow defeat to Cork. But it would be another nine summers before he would lift the Liam MacCarthy Cup. Over the next decade, the whole country became fixated on Galway's quest for glory and the many struggles along the way: would Joe Canning be the greatest hurler never to win an All-Ireland medal? Pulsating with a unique sense of family and community in a place where hurling is a way of life, Joe Canning's memoir reflects on the standards of excellence he sometimes felt chained to, the suffocation of trying to meet other people's expectations and the personal battles that brought perspective to a singular focus on winning. Thoughtful and revealing, this is the remarkable story of one of Ireland's greatest hurlers.