“There have been no complaints from players in terms of loading or anything like that. If they brought Sigerson and Fitzgibbon before Christmas and release U21s from playing FBD (Connacht League) and competitions like that, then that’s all it would have taken.

“This thing of going to U20 without your star senior players, as someone said to me, has all the makings of being the next Railway Cup – a one-time great competition but forgotten about in a few years.

"This is a great competition. Every two weeks, it’s knock-out. When we sat down, you know there’s an end date, when the games are going to be played and you know it’s going to create excitement.”

Just 33, former county dual player Cullinane, who had the unique honour of winning an U21 All-Ireland title in both codes in 2005, brought an end to his Galway career five years ago when he dropped himself from Alan Mulholland’s panel due to a lack of starting opportunities.

Management came to Cullinane more than the other way around. A Sigerson Cup medallist with a Gerry Fahy-led NUIG in 2003, the pair remained friendly and were asked to take charge of the university’s freshers just months prior to Fahy being appointed U21 manager in December 2015. Asking Cullinane to come on board with him at county level seemed a logical step.

“By the time we got going it was January and we only had eight weeks to prepare,” Cullinane recalls of the build-up to losing a provincial quarter-final to Roscommon.

“We’re not making excuses but we probably didn’t have a huge amount of time to apply our ways on things. We sat down afterwards and looked at what we thought went right and what went wrong and how we felt we could address it. If we couldn’t do that then it was time to let somebody else have a cut at it but we believed we could improve and then Val Daly got involved.

“We started a lot earlier this year in terms of strength and conditioning because we felt we were behind other counties. We think that has helped us so far in terms of injuries. The most important thing from the Kerry game is we came through injury-free and we have been lucky enough in that regard for most of the year barring a few minor knocks and bumps.”

Galway have been drawing plenty of followers with the positive football they have been producing. Many natives appreciate it as that which is most natural to the county. Cullinane modestly says it’s what the players find most comfortable.

“It might sound a bit disrespectful to our backs but we knew looking at our last couple of minor teams and lads of age that we had good forwards. If we sat down at the start of the year and said ‘we’re struggling with our forwards but we have exceptional backs’ then we might have to look at trying to win games 10 points to eight and just park the bus and cut our cloth to suit.

"We’re not doing anything revolutionary because people knew about Michael Daly, Robert Finnerty, Dessie Connelly... they’re all proven forwards and we’re just letting them play.

"We maybe have conceded a bit more than we like but we’re solid at the back and happy with the way it’s going. But if we get turned over by Dublin while playing a good brand of football people will be saying ‘why didn’t we try and close Dublin out better’ but the feedback I’m getting from supporters is we’re playing a nice style of football and one that suits the players.

“We won’t take any great credit for that – that’s just the way the team has evolved. It’s great for people who have this notion of Galway football but it’s just the style that suits this team.”

Bookmakers are now forewarned having written off Galway against Kerry although Cullinane can’t blame them if they are favouring the opposition again.

“It was never mentioned by us Kerry were 1/7 or something crazy. We weren’t using those figures to get the lads fired away. We were 100% focused on performance and we said if we get a performance the result will take care of itself and we did get a performance.

“As regards Dublin, they are probably going to be favourites. Con O’Callaghan is an exceptional talent and obviously the name that stands out in both football and hurling but Aaron Byrne is excellent too.

“If we tie down Con O’Callaghan and forget about Aaron Byrne then we’re in serious trouble. Their full-back Cillian O’Shea is a great footballer too. Bar one or two of the Kerry lads, they are probably more physically developed than Kerry, which will bring a different dynamic and problem to us.

"They seem to play a different style to Kerry and one that we haven’t yet come across so that will cause problems too. But if we can go out and perform, take the game to them and go at them from the start, because these Dublin teams tend to start at 100 miles an hour, then we’re in with a shout.”