Archive News
Rebounders honing the skills of An SpidŽalÕs young hurlers
Date Published: 06-Sep-2012
Mention An Spidéal and you most likely think of Gaelic football, the popular TG4 soap Ros na Rún or attractive TV presenters, sisters Gráinne and Síle Seoige. Rarely would you contemplate An Spidéal as a hotbed of hurling.
Yet, for all that, it may surprise some to hear that there has been a long and proud tradition of hurling in the village. An Spidéal GAA Club, itself, was established in 1906 and it is said that there was a hurling team in the club at its inception.
Indeed, since then, the club, which stretches approximately five miles along the coast road from Doire Locháin through Spiddal village to Púirín, has fielded – and continues to field – a large number of teams in all age groups in both codes.
While there are not many pictures or snippets of information regarding the club available from the beginning of the last century, recently a photograph of an An Spidéal team from 1912 was unearthed as part of a heritage project between Galway County Council and the Galway County Board. The picture shows the Spidéal hurling team standing under the trees as they ready themselves to take to the field.
You might well ask where is this going? Well, to recognise the 100 year plus history of hurling in the club, a company that provides sports equipment has thrown its weight and support behind An Spidéal’s young hurlers to help them fulfil their potential.
In all, Banaghans of Tipperary has given an obligation to supply 18 rebounders – an elasticised net on a fixed metal frame – to players on An Spidéal’s U-8 team to help them hone their skills and, hopefully, realise their potential on the field of play in the coming years. The ‘Hurling Rebounder’ has been designed by former Tipperary All-Ireland winner and All Star, Michael Cleary.
Just a word on the rebounder. When the sliotar is struck against the net it is ‘rebounded’ at speed towards the player – at much greater speed than when struck against a wall. Using the rebounder improves catching and blocking skills, hand eye co-ordination and striking accuracy.
Also, when the ball is struck against the centre of the net it rebounds directly to the player but when struck off centre the ball returns at different trajectories and this variation in the return of the sliotar improves the reflex reactions of the player.
At the moment, the hurling division of the club uses two of them. The idea to embrace the equipment in training came from An Spidéal’s U-8 coaches Anthony Murray and Jimmy Morris, both of whom had purchased the rebounder for their own children and had seen the positive results it had in improving the fledging stars’ skills.
Over a few weeks, you could see the benefits,” says Portumna native Murray. “When you start with them, you kind of think they are not going to be even able to get a block on it, but they are starting to catch the ball now.
“Even with the few you might see dropping away [from the game] in a few years time, there was great improvement. There is one young fellow there and I thought I would never see him catch a ball but last night he caught a few off the rebounder.
“The small fellows sometimes find it hard to hit it, though, so what we do is – Jimmy or I – would hit the ball off the rebounder and they would catch it on the way back,” explains Murray, who notes the equipment has not only improved the children’s striking and catching, it has also enhanced their reflex action.
“We play a match now and some of the lads are hitting it (the sliotar) 30 or 40 yards further. It definitely has brought them on a good bit. I suppose clubs which have a ball wall, it probably wouldn’t be an advantage but for a club that wouldn’t have a wall, these would be good.”
For more, read this week’s Galway City 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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