Archive News
Dazzling Clarinbridge are the best team in the land
Date Published: {J}
THERE were only 27 minutes gone in the All-Ireland Club hurling final at Croke Park last Thursday, but the situation was already grim for Clarinbridge. Trailing by 0-9 to 0-4 and with opponents O’Loughlin Gaels dictating the trend of the exchanges, the Galway champions badly needed to get some foothold on the match before it was too late. Incredibly, by half-time, they had done much more than just that – they managed to retire on level terms.
It represented some turnaround in the space of little more than six minutes and though the concluding action of the opening-half was out of quilter with what had gone before, Clarinbridge had not only resurrected their prospects of winning an historic All-Ireland title but, at the same time, had seriously deflated their Kilkenny rivals who for all their dominance were back to square one at the interval.
O’Loughlin Gaels had to start all over again and the mood in their dressing room during half-time couldn’t have been positive – all that hurling and still only drawing the match. Their collective spirit had taken a hit and you almost see the energy and confidence draining from them soon after the resumption. Untypically of a modern-day Kilkenny outfit, they faded tamely away and could only manage two pointed frees for their troubles in the second-half.
In contrast, the Clarinbridge players had returned to the battleground with a spring in their step. From five points down, their defence under pressure and the forwards living off scraps, they were right back in the contest and, to the Galway champions’ credit, the men in maroon didn’t let the opportunity pass them by in the second-half as they hurled O’Loughlins off the park in becoming the sixth club from the county to lift the Tommy Moore Cup.
Sure, they had ridden their luck along the way, but the ’Bridge made the most of the odd break here and there to eke out the necessary improvement from being lucky to emerge from their group in Galway to being crowned the best club team in the land in the space of a few months. That’s some achievement by any standards for a club whose combination hurling has always been pleasing on the eye.
Similar to the situation in that epic All-Ireland semi-final against De La Salle, Clarinbridge were also off the pace and struggling badly in the opening quarter at Croke Park. With O’Loughlins’ Mark Bergin causing serious damage on the forty from where he landed four quality points from play in the opening 17 minutes, the Leinster title holders were by far the more convincing outfit with Daniel Loughnane and Alan Geoghegan also paying their way up front.
Clarinbridge were being largely restricted to sporadic attacks and though those forays helped yield points from the lively Eoin Forde, Mark Kerins, Paul Coen and raiding wing back Jamie Cannon in the opening 26 minutes, they had been playing catch up for much of the first-half and were coming off second best in most of the key duels around the field. Approaching the break, however, the game underwent a dramatic transformation.
After Alan Kerins, already benefitting from his switch out the field, and Forde had hit the target, Clarinbridge struck for the most timely goal possible as Mark Kerins, now at full forward, threaded a close range ground stroke to the corner of the O’Loughlins’ net in injury time. Kerins then had a rasping drive from his penalty effort deflected over the bar and, suddenly, the ‘Bridge were level.
While the conclusion to the opening-half clearly knocked the heart of the Kilkenny champions, by the same token it liberated Clarinbridge from the pressures of big-day hurling. They re-emerged for the second-half with a new-found belief and assurance as they proceeded to produce a magnificent 30 minutes of textbook play which left O’Loughlins chasing shadows. It was mostly one-way traffic as Micheal Donoghue’s charges outscored their demoralised opponents by 1-11 by 0-2.
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
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
