Archive News
American student in Galway hooked on Gaelic football
Date Published: 18-Oct-2012
SOMETIMES it pays to keep your mouth shut and nobody realises the value of that more than NUI Galway Gaelic footballer Conor Canavan. That’s why since arriving down to the training pitches in Dangan last month, he has rarely opened his mouth, preferring to let his talents on the field do all the talking for him.
So what, you may say. Well, while Conor Canavan has good Tyrone blood in him – he’s a distant relation to the legendary Peter Canavan – he actually is a born and bred American, one who only took up Gaelic football in his native Philadelphia two years ago.
Having spent the last two Summers rubbing shoulders with far more experienced players at Young Irelanders in Philadelphia – many of whom came over from Ireland during the holidays to play football – Canavan has come to recognise the scepticism in those players’ eyes whenever he takes to the field. An American! Playing Gaelic football!
However, that very sport has become his passion and it is one of the reasons he is now studying at NUI Galway. “It was one of the main reasons I wanted to come here,” reiterates the 20-year-old, as he sits in the coffee shop at NUIG’s Kingfisher Gym. “I wanted to play Gaelic football.
“Another reason beyond that was I wanted to meet my family [in Tyrone] because a lot of them I hadn’t seen in a while or had never met at all. That said, I love Gaelic football and I love playing. When I came here, I wanted to get involved right away.”
That he did, one of approximately 50 players who tried out for the two Freshers teams in the University. Without saying a word, he was selected for the ‘B’ outfit and last week played his part in their opening round game against IT Sligo in Dangan.
“I decided to keep that (his American roots) a secret,” states the affable Canavan. “Over the last two Summers, when they (Irish players) find out you are American, they think you play badly. So, I tried keeping that a secret.
“So, half the team don’t even know that I am American yet. A couple of boys have asked where I am from but I say ‘Philly’ really quietly. I am sure by next week, they will all know. The secret is out now.”
A Marketing Major at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, Canavan is only in the West of Ireland for one semester and is taking classes in English, marketing, biogeography and history at NUI Galway. And of course, Gaelic football.
“I played soccer all the way through High School for Bonnar [Catholic High School] – I also played club soccer for Spirit United – and then I played soccer for the university in the first semester. It is nothing like a college sport over here. There is a lot more dedication, about 25 hours a week, along with practice and study hall hours.
“My grades weren’t keeping up so I had to quit. When I gave up that I still wanted to stay active so my dad [Dominic] said to play Gaelic football in the Summer. Ever since then, I love the sport. It has been my favourite sport of all those I have played, and I played American football, basketball, soccer and rugby. Gaelic football tops all of them.”
In addition to featuring regularly with Young Irelanders – who won the North American men’s intermediate final this past Summer – Canavan is currently in the process of forming a Gaelic football team at his university back home and they hope to have games this Fall.
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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