Archive News
Clubs to run the rule over new championship plans
Date Published: {J}
STEPHEN GLENNON
THE proposed new structures of the Galway senior and intermediate championships will take centre stage when the Galway Hurling Board convention gets underway this evening (Thursday) at the Raheen Woods Hotel, Athenry (8pm).
With all Hurling Board officers – including Chairman Joe Byrne, Secretary Pat Kearney and Treasurer John McGann – to be re-elected unopposed, the focus will largely be on the recent proposals set out by the Galway Hurling Review Group, some of which form motions on the convention’s agenda.
To the fore is the re-structuring of the senior and intermediate championships, which proposes that the number of teams in the senior competition be extended from 20 to 21 and that a new format be put in place which grants the previous year’s intermediate champions a two-year term, at the very least, at this grade.
Under the proposal, in the first round, the other 20 teams would play each other in an open draw format, with the 10 winners progressing to a group stage – four groups of four – and the 10 losers of the first round would then play off in a subsequent series of games.
The five winners from that second round of games would also join the group stages – along with the intermediate champions – while the other five would be condemned to a relegation battle run on a league basis. One team will be relegated each year.
In the group stages – rounds three to five – teams will play three games, with the top two sides in each group of four advancing to the quarter-finals and the bottom two teams entering a Shield equivalent. The same principles will also apply to the intermediate competition.
Other motions on the structure of these championships for 2012 have also been put forward by Athenry, Meelick/Eyrecourt and Gort, but these motions, it is understood, were submitted prior to the report’s recommendations and, in light of the Group’s proposals, may be withdrawn.
In any event, both Athenry and Meelick/Eyrecourt are seeking a two-tier senior championship, with the latter advocating an ‘A’ and ‘B’ senior competitions and a 12 team intermediate championship. For their part, Gort are seeking the retention of the 2011 system for the running of the senior and intermediate hurling championships for 2012.
Two other motions drafted by the Review Group – and submitted by Kilbeacanty – are also up for discussion, namely the proposal calling for the All-Ireland U-21 championship to be played in a Champions League style format and the changing of the 13-day inter-county rule to just six days, so allowing club fixtures to go ahead the week before inter-county ties.
Meanwhile, in his Secretary’s Report, Pat Kearney has alluded to the trials and tribulations of the Galway senior team in 2011, including their “abject performance” against Waterford in the All-Ireland quarter-final.
He noted that it was, once again, Galway’s “inability to react in a pressure game situation” that ultimately cost them.
For more, read this week’s Connacht 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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