Archive News
Corofin’s winning pedigree stands to champs again
Date Published: 21-Oct-2009
YOU have to admire Corofin. Our hearts can go out to the gallant losers but we must take our hats off to Corofin. It’s hard to put a finger on it but they just have an extraordinary knack for winning.
Corofin footballers were made for county finals – and bred to win them. On Sunday, at Tuam Stadium the North Board kingpins secured the club’s 13th county title – and tenth since 1991 – with a defiant late surge that just about pipped a brave Mountbellew/Moylough team who were literally out on their feet having struggled against the tide for 45 minutes or more with just 14-men.
Corofin have won a county title on average once every two years in the past two decades. It’s an extraordinary statistic when you think about it. Not many club teams in the country can boost of such an impressive record, but that’s what they do – Corofin are winners.
You might beat them every now and then in the league, maybe get one over on them, on an off-day, in the early rounds of the championship but once there’s a whiff of a county medal they are relentless.
Mountbellew/Moylough’s impressive record of winning the last two county final replays they appeared in – against Corofin in 1974 and against Milltown in 1986 – gave the outsiders hope and the superstitious confidence that they might topple the reigning champions in the 2009 replay.
But it is the recent tradition that was of more importance and Corofin haven’t lost a county final since 1990 when they were beaten by Salthill/Knocknacarra who subsequently went on to win the All-Ireland. Putting back to back county titles together is notoriously difficult – you lack hunger facing into a new year as reigning champions. Or so the theory goes.
Corofin, however, knocked that thesis on its head again on Sunday and showed an enormous drive, determination, mental strength and backbone to conjure up a late assault to win their first back-to-back county senior titles since the successes of 1997 and 1998, and only the club’s second back-to-back title ever.
After Sunday’s momentous victory, Corofin trainer and selector Martin McNamara told Tribune Sport that the fact that nobody outside Corofin wanted them to win, was a major motivating factor in Sunday’s triumph. It’s the Corofin siege mentality – us against the county; us against the world. They’re all out to get us but we’ll show them. And they did, if only just.
“The big motivation really is that absolutely nobody in the county, apart from the 30 or so lads in the dressing room and our own hardcore supporters from Corofin, wanted us to win it today.
“Everybody wanted Mountbellew to win; it’s only nature that neutrals would support the underdogs and that’s a huge motivation for us. It’s been that way for Corofin for years – we don’t have too many neutrals supporting us but that helps to motivate us and it drives us on,” said McNamara.
Corofin Captain Kieran Comer, who was Corofin’s main protagonist on Sunday, added that the team bond and friendship also spurred them on. “We are over the moon. It’s not many teams that put back-to-back county titles together and it’s nice to do that,” said Comer.
“It wasn’t easy all year, every game was a dog fight and it was a pure dog fight again today. It is January 2008 when we started training – it’s been a long, tough two years and it was hard to keep focused to do the two-in-a-row. What keeps us going is the training, we enjoy training together every night with the lads, we’re all friends and we want to win for each other.
“They fairly got out of the traps whereas we were very sluggish. Mountbellew are a serious team with serious players. We just had to keep clawing our way back in, pick a point off here and there. It took us a while but we began to get on top in the last quarter. Two weeks ago when they drew level with us the momentum was with them and a few more minutes on the clock and they could have won. When we got back level the momentum was with us today,” added Comer.
Many observers felt Corofin would have had the drawn match won by half-time two Sundays previous if they had been more clinical upfront. So did the forwards get a lot of ‘stick’ the last day after hitting 13 fairly kickable wides and was that another factor in their replay performance?
“Ah we did get a bit (of stick) but the thing about the last day is they weren’t bad wides, they weren’t crazy shots,” said full-forward Joe Canney.
“It was just one of those days where they didn’t go over for us. You’ll have days like that, on another day they’d all go over for you and you’re a hero – it’s a fine line.
“The drawn game was a motivating factor in a way but we take good criticism with the bad and at this stage it is water off a ducks back for us listening to all the criticism. We missed a lot the last day but we knew there was a lot more in Mountbellew from the drawn game and we knew we had to up our game.
“We conceded early today but the thing about conceding early is there’s always time to come back. We knew we had the ability to come back. We never panicked when the scores went in early. There were a few scary moments for us there but we dug it out in the end,” added Canney.
McNamara, an All-Ireland club and county medal winner, was refreshingly honest in the dressing room after the match about the management’s first half tactics. “It (sending off) worked against us for a while. I suppose on the line we didn’t get it right. We were probably too cautious and held our extra man back sitting in front of their two inside forwards.
“As it worked out, in hindsight it probably was nearly the wrong thing to do and we should probably have driven on. We changed tactics in the second half and we drove on a little bit and it worked out for us in the end and I think there was probably a bit of good fortune in it as well.
“We brought a young lad Ronan Steede on, he’s only 18 – what a legend – he kicked two points and it was just like a training session to him. The pressure didn’t get to him at all and it’s fantastic to have somebody like that to call on from the bench.
“We won it the hard way. Mountbellew were very unfortunate, they probably played much better than us for the 60 minutes but the extra man caught them out in the end. They had so much work put in they just ran out of steam in the last few minutes that allowed us to get the extra couple of scores – your heart would have to go out to them, they fought right to the end. We’re just delighted to win, we came strong in the end and we’ll have a bit of a celebration tonight,” said McNamara.
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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