Joe Canning Laochra Gael will screen next week on TG4 and it offers a rare and fascinating insight into the life of the Galway and Portumna great.
When he was playing, Canning kept a low profile and he’s continued that since his retirement at the end of last year.
But the TG4 show covers everything from his emergence as a teenage sensation, and his face being stood on in the 2007 county final, through to finally winning an All-Ireland with Galway in 2017.
Canning says he “learned not to take any s*** after that,” (2007 incident) and got “mentally steelier” for the challenges which lay ahead.
He also used newspaper articles to motivate himself to try and prove people wrong: “For a chip on my shoulder,” he says.
Canning’s closeness to his parents is clear, with his mother, Josephine passing away last year.
There are some insightful contributions from Galway team mate David Burke and from Canning's father Sean, who tells matter-of-factly how he had a heart attack in 2005 and ended up in the Mater Hospital.
He was in Croke Park that day as Joe and older brother Ollie lined out for Galway minors and seniors respectively.
The pressure Canning was under to deliver for Galway comes across throughout the programme.
He also says that he was against the player heave which followed the 2015 All-Ireland final defeat by Kilkenny that saw Anthony Cunningham removed.
“I felt - and three or four of the other guys felt - that we should have been looking at ourselves and not the management. I actually backed Anthony to stay.
“Because he had done so much for us, it wasn’t the right thing to do. It just got messy after that.
“It still drags on the narrative: ‘Never win an All-Ireland. Never win an All-Ireland.’
“It was a lot of pressure put on us and I think guys understood that as well.
“If we don’t perform in ‘16 we will be bad-mouthed forever else.”
Canning also addresses the aftermath of the 2012 All-Ireland final replay defeat by Kilkenny and his feeling that a couple of Galway players blamed him.
That came after a comment in a press conference that referred to Henry Shefflin and stated Galway needed to be more like Kilkenny.
There’s no shortage of material in the programme, from the plethora of wonder goals to the pressure free to draw the 2012 All-Ireland final and the astonishing winning point against Tipperary in the 2017 semi-final.
Canning also had to deal with a serious injury against Tipp in the 2016 All-Ireland semi-final, which put him out for over half a season.
“Some people were saying, ‘You mightn’t get back playing again,’ ” he recalls.
“In my head I was, ‘Nah, I’m definitely going to be playing again.’ It wasn’t an issue for me. I’d be very stubborn like that in trying to prove people wrong.
On winning the All-Ireland in 2017, he says it was, “like a pressure valve just released.
“Enough was enough, We were sick of losing All-Irelands.”
***** Joe Canning, Laochra Gael screens next Thursday night (January 26: 9.30pm), as the popular TG4 programme begins its 21st series.
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