Archive News
Corofin footballers are the victims of raw deal
Date Published: {J}
IT was a bad day for the GAA in Kiltoom last Sunday. A shocking refereeing performance led directly to unsavoury scenes after the Connacht club senior football final as some of the Corofin players and team’s supporters verbally took their frustration and sense of injustice out on Mayo official Liam Devenney. In the circumstances, it was hard to blame them.
To put it mildly, the Galway champions had got a raw deal. Apart from the disallowing of what appeared a perfectly legitimate opening-half goal from Michael Farragher, they were the victims of several inexplicable frees being awarded against them on a day Devenney also stirred controversy by flashing yellow cards – a staggering 14 in all – left, right and centre. He also unwittingly got in the way of a promising second-half Corofin attack.
Frankly, several of the incidents which led to bookings hardly merited a free never mind the players in question entering the referee’s notebook and it all conspired to tarnish Connacht club football’s biggest occasion of the year. Sure, St. Brigid’s also suffered from a couple of baffling refereeing decisions themselves, but the big losers were Corofin who were undoubtedly the better footballing team and were in a strong position at the interval when ahead 0-7 to 0-4.
The fact that the match was played in St. Brigid’s back yard ought to come under scrutiny too. We had assumed that matches of this prestige were only staged at designated county grounds, but Sunday’s final going ahead in Kiltoom represented a massive advantage for Senan Kilbride and company. Granted, St. Brigid’s had to travel to Tuam to take on Killererin last year, but at least that venue is a high profile inter-county stadium. It begs the question why the Connacht Council didn’t fix the 2011 final for Hyde Park?
For all that, Corofin should still have regained the Connacht title. Against opponents who failed to score from play in the first-half, they produced nearly all the quality football and engineered some slickly created points from Farragher, Kieran Comer, Justin Burke and Michael Lundy. St. Brigid’s best moment of the half came when Kilbride opened their scoring from a free after a storming run upfield by centre back Peter Domican.
The opening ten minutes of the second-half was dour stuff, but Corofin spurned a great chance to stretch their lead when substitute Ronan Steede failed to take a simple point scoring opportunity and, instead, ran into opposition defensive traffic in the 37th minute. It was a key moment, especially as the title holders suddenly found some momentum in kicking five unanswered five points, including their first efforts from play via Cathal McHugh and Kilbride.
The initiative was with the Roscommon men, but to Corofin’s credit they managed to get back on terms with two points from Alan O’Donovan. However, they were the victims of a terrible call when St. Brigid’s were awarded a close range free for literally nothing, especially as Gary Sice looked to have been fouled moments earlier. Dolan made no mistake and when the former county player sent over a rousing point from play after David Morris had advanced bravely to thwart Enda Sheedy, the game was slipping away from the Galway champions.
Despite no shortage of effort in the closing minutes, all they could manage was a Donovan free as Brigid’s held on for a scarcely deserved victory. Sunday’s lost was a sickening blow for a Corofin team which must be shattered by the nature of this defeat. They produced the more fluent football and their link-up play at times had the title holders under serious pressure, but they never killed off their dogged opponents off. That maybe will haunt them most of all.
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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