Archive News
Cullinane flying again after injury nightmare
Date Published: {J}
STEPHEN GLENNON
IF there is one Galway hurler who has more reason than any other to relish Sunday’s All-Ireland quarter-final clash against Waterford at Semple Stadium, Thurles, it is Craughwell defender, Adrian Cullinane.
Having spent five years in Waterford IT, where he studied Business & Sport, Cullinane soldiered alongside such Deise stalwarts as Michael ‘Brick’ Walsh and Kevin Moran, winning no less than three Fitzgibbon Cup medals with WIT in this time.
Indeed, those were heady days for the Craughwell man, days when friendships and memories were moulded in succinct strokes.
Consequently, it is with a heightened sense of anticipation he approaches Sunday’s contest . . . more so given he missed the two counties’ last championship meeting through injury in 2009.
On that occasion, Cullinane, who had suffered a devastating cruciate injury against Clare in the qualifiers, could only watch on in despair as Waterford netted in the closing minutes to snatch a dramatic 1-16 to 0-18 victory. How he would have loved to have had an opportunity to influence the outcome! To have a crack at his old college team-mates!
“We kind of left it behind us, I thought, that day,” sighs the Galway defender. “That year, I got injured and then the following game against Cork, Kav [Shane Kavanagh] got injured. So, things had begun to snowball. When you are missing a hurler like Kav, it disrupts the whole lot.
“It was very disappointing, though, to miss that game. I remember coming off the field against Clare [in the qualifiers] and knowing the year was over. A week or so later, when things had settled down, I told Mac (John McIntyre), there was no point in me hanging around but the management asked me would I stay on and I did.
“Hardy (John Hardiman) had it on record that I hadn’t missed a training session or challenge that year, never mind a competitive game. I had played everything up to the Clare game. So, the day of the Waterford game, I didn’t want to get out of the bed, to be honest. It was so disheartening to be on crutches and to be down on the sideline just looking at it. The way that game finished, you could just see it happening. That day was something out of a horror film really.”
In the aftermath of that defeat, Cullinane had the necessary operation to address his injury problems, noting the advice he received from former WIT doctor and Orthopaedic specialist Tadhg O’Sullivan, Director of the Whitfield Sports Clinic, was critical in his recovery.
“It was a long road back,” admits the 28-year-old. “Tadhg O’Sullivan was very good – I have to say that about him – but the road back was something torturous. I wouldn’t fancy it again. I don’t know how Henry Shefflin did it two years running. It is definitely tough going. They said it would be six to eight months recovery, but realistically you are looking at the guts of a year.”
In any event, Cullinane spent those long winter nights rehabilitating, returning to club and county action in the spring of 2010. “The club were very good to me as well. I started off with just 10 minutes up at corner forward in every challenge game and slowly started to work my way back to full fitness.
“When I got back hurling, I thought I was in decent enough shape but the day we played Kilkenny in the Leinster final, I started at midfield and within 20 minutes I knew I was nowhere near the pitch of the game. Championship games like that though will always bring you on. It was not until the day we (Craughwell) played Loughrea in our final group game, that the knee finally settled down. That was the day when things went well for me and I haven’t looked back since.”
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
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