Archive News
Galway ladies football clubs head to London for clashes with exiles
Date Published: {J}
STEPHEN GLENNON
THE ladies footballers of Caltra Cuans and Claregalway will hope to continue their winning ways when they both travel to London for their respective All-Ireland quarter-final ties in Ruislip this weekend.
Connacht intermediate champions Caltra Cuans – who face Parnells on Sunday morning (11:30am) – have been on an amazing run in recent times, winning the All-Ireland junior title last year and driving to county and provincial success in the intermediate ranks this year.
“Really, this is our third year of success since I took them over in 2009,” says Caltra Cuans manager Gabriel Naughton. “We won the junior ‘B’ the first year, then we won the junior ‘A’ last year – including the All-Ireland – and we have added the county and Connacht intermediate titles this year.
“Believe or not, though, we were not going all that well early on in the year, but when we reached the county semi-final, the hunger and appetite returned and we then beat Milltown in the semi-final. We were still the underdogs heading into the final against Kilkerrin/Clonberne because they were an established intermediate team. But we turned them over, even though it was tight enough in the finish. We scored a point in injury-time to win it.”
Caltra followed this up with emphatic victories over Cill Chomain of Mayo (2-11 to 1-7) and Drumcliffe of Sligo (3-13 to 2-8) in the Connacht semi-final and decider respectively. Those victories have already distinguished them as serious All-Ireland contenders.
“We will just take it one game at a time and hopefully we will not trip up over there in London,” says Naughton. “If we win, we will be playing the All-Ireland semi-final against the Ulster champions the following week and we could end up playing the team (St. Enda’s of Omagh) we played in the junior All-Ireland final. So, that would be interesting.”
That said, the trip to London will pose its own problems – it is the proverbial banana skin – but Naughton is still confident, believing his Caltra Cuans outfit is a nicely balanced side. “We still have eight or nine minors in our first 15 and a couple of those would be U-16,” continues the Caltra boss.
“Obviously, collectively, they are a year older than they were last year and you saw what happened last year. They took great experience from that journey [to All-Ireland success].
“Also, we don’t have any star player as such. We are very balanced and on different days, different girls can stand up and deliver. So, it would be grossly unfair to name half a dozen players when really we have players who can do it for us all throughout the team.”
However, there is the form book to go by and in this respect Galway dual player Sarah Noone has been most impressive at centre-back, as has Aine Tully on the flank. Both have the wonderful ability to break forward and take their scores.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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