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Callanan misses big day but having a ball Down Under

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Date Published: 05-Sep-2012

CIARAN TIERNEY

ASKING Galway hurler Aonghus Callanan has he any regrets as he relaxes on a beach in Australia this week calls to mind the infamous story of the waiter who asked the late Georgie Best “where it all went wrong” when he arrived with room service to find the former soccer star in bed with Miss World.

The 27-year old is having the time of his life, surfing, socialising, earning good money as a quantity surveyor, and playing football and hurling during a year out in Sydney which has exceeded his expectations.

While the news from home is regularly full of “doom and gloom”, he looks forward to sunny Saturdays spent surfing on Bondi Beach or joining a host of young Irish revellers on a cruise around Sydney Harbour. Even in the middle of winter, the weather is better than back home.

The Liam Mellows attacker decided to take a year out ‘Down Under’ last November, despite approaches by Anthony Cunningham and his selectors, Mattie Kenny and Tom Helebert, who made it clear he was part of their plans for the Galway senior hurling team in 2012.

 

When they began a tough conditioning programme back in January, Aonghus was instead training with lads from all over Ireland when he joined the Michael Cusacks GAA Club in Sydney.

He has had a brilliant year with Cusacks. They beat favourites Sydney Shamrocks by 1-25 to 2-16 in the NSW Championship Final just last Sunday, winning the League, Championship, and Central Coast treble for the first time in the history of the club.

Callanan played a big part in all three title successes and controlled the half-forward line on Sunday. Off the field, the club has organised BBQs, boat cruises, and skiing trips which have helped him to make a host of new friends.

He has kept a keen eye on the Galway hurlers’ league and championship campaigns, thanks to a Setanta Sports package costing $20 a month, all year. There may be pangs of regret that he is missing out on the All-Ireland final this week, but he is also having a whale of a time thousands of miles from home.

Last year’s hurling championship ended in the despair of a tame All-Ireland quarter-final defeat to Waterford and Callanan just felt it was the right time to make the move ‘Down Under’. He flew out at the end of October.

“I have been involved with county teams since I was 14 or 15 years of age. I felt if I didn’t take this opportunity I would never get the chance. Physically and mentally, I felt it was time for a bit of a change,” he told Tribune Sport this week.

“I had never lived away from Ireland before, because of hurling. Not that I regretted it. I enjoyed it, but I just felt last year that it was the right time to get away.”

He joined fellow Galwegians such as Enda Coen and Brendan Dooley at the Michael Cusacks club as soon as he arrived in Sydney. Given that the Bushypark native also played football for Salthill-Knocknacarra, he also decided to join the Pentrith Gaels.

The GAA, particularly the Michael Cusacks connections, helped him to make new friends and to settle quickly into the hectic social life the young Irish enjoy in the city.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

Galway in Days Gone By

The way we were – Protecting archives of our past

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A photo of Galway city centre from the county council's archives

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

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Archive News

Galway have lot to ponder in poor show

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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.

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Archive News

Real Galway flavour to intermediate club hurling battle in Birr

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Date Published: 23-Jan-2013

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