Archive News
Connacht in the mood to spring shock on home turf
Date Published: 18-Oct-2012
Dara Bradley
HEINEKEN Cup rugby returns to Galway this weekend and a first full-house of the season is expected at the Sportsground on Saturday (6pm) as over 8,000 fans flock to College Road to see Connacht take on reigning English Premiership champions, Harlequins, in what has almost become an annual Anglo Irish fixture between the two teams.
Head Coach Eric Elwood is confident that two young home-grown stars of the back-line, centre Eoin Griffin and full-back Robbie Henshaw, who both reported ankle injuries following Connacht’s opening round Heineken Cup win over Zebre in Parma last Saturday, will be fit for selection as the Westerners seek to defy the odds again and emulate last January’s heroic success over ‘Quins.
Captain Gavin Duffy, who was a rock at full-back in the 9-8 famous victory over Harlequins in the final pool game of Connacht’s Heineken journey last season – a result that ended the home side’s 14-match losing streak and ended the visitors’ hopes of qualification to the quarter-final stages of the competition – didn’t train again this week and remains unavailable.
The loss of his young replacement, Henshaw, who only sat his Leaving Certificate in May, would be a major concern for Elwood, who would then have to do an unwelcome re-jig in the backs, with winger Tiernan O’Halloran donning the number 15 jersey or possibly replacement number 10s, Matthew Jarvis or Miah Nikora, filling the full-back position.
Elwood, however, is “hopeful” both Griffin and Henshaw will be available, even though they have been rested and didn’t partake in training this week.
If he does play, Henshaw, who has really impressed since stepping up to senior, will face a real baptism of fire against the English aristocrats who had targeted the full-back area – without much success, it must be said, given that Duffy was in top form – the last time they visited the Sportsground.
Dave McSharry suffered knocks and bruises in Italy at the weekend, as did George Naoupu who played despite a bout of flu, but both are expected to be available for selection.
Meanwhile, visiting coach Conor O’Shea has some injury worries of his own. Harlequins’ World class out-half, Nick Evans, retired early with a foot injury from the Biarritz game at the weekend and was seen in crutches going down the tunnel at half-time. And although the New Zealander reassured fans on an internet social networking site on Monday that he was “a bit sore” but was hoping it would “heal fast”, the number 10 remains a doubt ahead of Saturday.
Harlequins minus Evans in theory are a weakened side but his understudy, Ben Botica, who came on after just 16 minutes at the Stoop, looked every bit as comfortable as the first choice playmaker. It was only Botica’s second senior cap for the London-based club, yet the 24-years-old belied his inexperience after being parachuted into the English outfit’s most important game of the season so far when he showed real composure to kick 16 of the home side’s 40 points, as Harlequins ran riot in the second half.
Tied 13 apiece at the break, Harlequins completely dominated the second-half and recorded 27 points without reply in the second 40 minutes to achieve a winning bonus point. A monstrous forwards effort in that second-half, in which their scrum and maul was too powerful for the hapless French, laid the foundation for victory.
The contrast in the levels of intensity between the two matches in pool three was huge – Connacht’s win over Zebre was played at a pedestrian tempo compared with the high-octane fare between the two favourites of the group, Harlequins and Biarritz.
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
images/files/images/x3_Courthouse.jpg
Families queue up for school’s offer of free house
West has lower cancer survival rates than rest
Galway minors continue to lay waste to all opponents
Gardaí and IFA issue a joint appeal on summer road safety
Marathon Man plans to call a halt – but not before he hits 160 races
