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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.
Joe Canning is a five-time All-Star hurler. In 2017 he won a senior All-Ireland medal for Galway, defeating Waterford to bring the Liam MacCarthy Cup back across the Shannon into Galway for the first time in 29 years and earning the Hurler of the Year award. Joe won back-to-back minor All-Irelands and an under-21 in 2007, the same year that he won a Fitzgibbon medal with Limerick IT. He also had a hugely successful club career with Portumna, winning four All-Irelands. He retired in July 2021 and now works in hospitality, enjoying his passion for golf in his spare time. He lives in Limerick with his wife Meg and daughter Josie. Joe continues to play for his club, Portumna, and is a selector for Galway’s under-20 hurlers.
Vincent Hogan is an acclaimed sports biographer and an award-winning sports journalist who recently retired after a long career with the Irish Independent. Books he has ghostwritten include Paul McGrath’s Back from the Brink (British Sports Autobiography of the Year, William Hill Irish Sports Book of the Year and BoyleSports Irish Sports Book of the Year 2006), Eddie O’Sullivan’s Never Die Wondering and the memoirs of the GAA’s Nicky English, Davy Fitzgerald, Henry Shefflin and Colm ‘the Gooch’ Cooper.