A step back in time to a day of unmitigated joy on Jones’ Road

Country Living with Francis Farragher

Like three people I spoke to last week – Cyril Farrell, Joe Connolly and Mike Conneely – I too was taken aback somewhat by the fact that it was 40 years ago last weekend, since Galway made their massive hurling breakthrough in the first Sunday of September, 1980.

There’s no point living in the past or fretting about how quickly the flywheel of time is passing but it’s only when you glance back, the realisation dawns that decades have passed by almost in the blink of an eye.

Those were very different times in Ireland and for someone just armed with a BA and the ‘H. Dip’ – eked out after four years of less than hard toil at the then UCG – there was another recession upon us and there was a lot scratching about to be done to get a bit of work.

The papal visit of John Paul II was still fresh in everyone’s memory, and in more superstitious minds, his trip to Galway Racecourse on September’s last day in 1979 was credited with eventually banishing the curse that had prevented the men in maroon from winning an All-Ireland title. (Folklore attributed the curse to a group of Galway players leaving Mass early many decades before that!).

For the previous eight years, Galway hurling had been knocking on the recovery door, winning All-Ireland under-21 titles in 1972 and 1978, before making an historic National League breakthrough in 1975 when defeating Tipperary in the final.

Everyone knew in Galway though that one final bridge had to be crossed before the county would be back as a hurling force – the winning of a second All-Ireland senior title, to eventually make that link between ‘the present’ and that year of 1923. 57 years was an awful long time to wait.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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