Archive News
Corcoran eager to turn the tables on his native county
Date Published: {J}
Dara Bradley
NIALL Corcoran is the one who got away. Perhaps, given the abundance of underage hurling talent in Galway in the first decade of the new millennium – the county has won four All-Ireland minor titles since 2000 – it’s inevitable that talent will slip through the net. After all, they can’t all cut it at senior.
But how is it that Meelick/Eyrecourt man Corcoran – who won a minor All-Ireland with Galway and represented his county of birth twice at U-21 level – will line-out at corner-back for Dublin this Saturday evening, to do battle against his native county, and his friends and former teammates, in the Leinster semi-final?
“I suppose it’s probably just the way it fell,” said the 28-year-old after a training session with his adopted county in Parnell Park on Tuesday night.
He was part of the 2000 All-Ireland minor winning team, managed by John Hardiman, the current Galway selector, and soldiered alongside some of his opponents next Saturday like Tony Óg Regan, Damien Hayes, Ger Farragher, Adrian Cullinane, Shane Kavanagh and Joe Gantley; and had two seasons with the county U21s, again under Hardiman.
Then in October 2007, Corcoran was one of a panel of about 60 lads brought in for winter training under the then Galway senior manager, Ger Loughnane. “I don’t think I ever trained so hard – a lot of it was just physical stuff for three months . . . it was tough going,” he recalled.
Then in January or February, having played just part of an inter-county challenge match, and never having got a chance at representing his county competitively at the highest level, Corcoran (and others) was dropped. “We had a meeting where names were all called out, and my name wasn’t – I hadn’t made the cut. I was 25 at that stage and thought I hadn’t made it, that’s it. You’d be thinking it’s getting late in the day and that it could be my last chance.”
It wasn’t. His chance would come – but not with Galway.
Corcoran was completing a four year Business Studies and Sports Management Degree in Athlone, through which, he heard about and subsequently secured a games promotion officer role with the Dublin County Board. In 2008, he made the transfer from his home club to Kilmacud Crokes, which was tough.
“Transferring from Meelick/Eyrecourt was the hardest decision I’ve had to make. My best friends were playing with the club. I’d played with them all my life. I’d two brothers playing with them. I thought long and hard about it. I talked to friends and family. My dad said ‘if it’s what you want to do, it’s what you want to do – go for it’. My mam was delighted because it meant I didn’t have to be travelling (up and down to training in Galway) the whole time . . . the motorway wasn’t the way it is now.”
Then came a call from Tommy Naughton, Dublin manager before Anthony Daly took charge, who asked him to a few training sessions. “I went along but I wasn’t thinking of playing for Dublin – it never crossed my mind”. Not until Dublin picked up some injuries in defence, that is, and he was catapulted in for the Leinster Championship opener against Westmeath, and he’s been a permanent fixture since, nailing down the corner-back position.
If last year’s championship exit at the hands of Antrim in the All-Ireland was his career low-point – “that defeat really hurt for a long time,” he said – winning the league final and bridging a 70 year gap for the capital against Kilkenny was one of the highs.
The change in fortunes, from losing to minnows to conquering the Cats, is attributed to several factors and “just a lot of small things coming together at the right time” like younger players coming through, a more ‘professional’ approach to training and preparation, experience, the ghost of the Antrim loss, more serious competition for places, the Anthony Daly factor.
He reckons the recent battle against Offaly in the Leinster quarter-final, where Dublin won by just four points, was the ideal preparation for their showdown with Galway – Offaly were the Alka-Seltzer that cured any hangover from the League final success. “If any team brings you down to earth it’s Offaly, they’re a very difficult championship team to beat as Galway found out last year . . . it certainly got the League final out of our system.”
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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