Archive News
Clonbur men strive to crown fairytale run with All-Ireland title
Date Published: {J}
CIARAN TIERNEY
A mass exodus from a small pocket of North Galway is on the cards this weekend when Clonbur bid to become the first team from the county to win the All-Ireland junior football club title by beating Derrytresk of Tyrone at Croke Park (2pm).
Never before has there been so much interest in a junior final, due to the fallout from the Ulster men’s controversial victory over Dromid Pearses of Kerry in last month’s semi-final, but Clonbur’s main task is to focus on 60 minutes of football and ignore the sideshows which have cast a shadow over the fixture.
Three of the Ulster men’s starting XV are suspended for the final – centre forward Joe McKee had his suspension lifted during a hearing at Croke Park on Tuesday night – and there was even a threat that they could be banned from the final at one stage.
Defenders Sean Slater and Kevin Campbell and wing forward Michael Robinson will all have to watch the game from the Hogan Stand after their suspensions were upheld by the GAA authorities, even though they were reduced from four to two months. Four of their subs are still suspended for the final.
The Tyrone club is banned from provincial and All-Ireland club competitions for the next five years and only four of their non-playing members (manager, secretary, doctor, and physio) will be allowed onto the pitch before or after the game, or at half-time.
One female supporter, who hit Kerry star Declan O’Sullivan with a handbag, has been banned from GAA games for a year and will miss her club’s first ever game at headquarters. A video of the semi-final brawl has attracted over 160,000 ‘hits’ on You Tube, which is not the kind of interest normally associated with a junior football competition.
Given that Robinson is their best forward, Derrytresk are bound to travel to Croke Park with a huge sense of grievance even though the fine imposed on them by the GAA authorities was reduced from €5,000 to €2,500 this week.
So what should be a dream Croke Park date for both clubs has instead been shrouded in controversy since Derrytresk beat Dromid Pearses by 1-10 to 0-7 in Portlaoise on January 22 last.
The danger for Clonbur manager Stephen Joyce is that his side may now be installed as strong favourites to lift the title, whereas he expects Derrytresk to be more motivated than ever in the wake of three weeks of controversy, suspensions, and appeals.
In a way, there has been so much controversy over the Ulster side’s semi-final that people barely noticed that Clonbur beat Ballivor of Meath by 3-4 to 0-3 on the same day in Carrick-on-Shannon to set up their own club’s fairytale place at Croke Park on Sunday.
“You can try to ignore all the controversy, but it is there in your face the whole time,” said Clonbur manager Stephen Joyce this week. “It has been a distraction, which probably hasn’t helped us, with the appeal taking place on Tuesday night.
“They will still have 15 players on the field and they will be highly motivated. We are going to be facing 15 players who are going out onto that pitch with a cause. People are saying it will be easier for us, but that might give them a psychological advantage. No doubt, they will be saying that everyone is against them.”
For Joyce, the main mission now is to get the mindset of his players right ahead of the final. They have to be wary of ‘loose talk’, that they will find it easier to overcome a side weakened by the absence of three key men.
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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