Archive News
Dejected Corofin hit out at referee Devenney
Date Published: {J}
Dara Bradley
DEFEATED Corofin captain Kieran Fitzgerald lambasted Mayo referee, Liam Devenney, for his standard of officiating during the Connacht club football championship final at Kiltoom, on Sunday.
The Ballina official was “a disgrace to the association” blasted the former inter-county player, who blamed refereeing decisions – including ruling out what appeared to be a legitimate Corofin first-half goal by full-forward Mike Farragher – for his side’s 0-11 to 0-10 loss to Roscommon champions St Brigid’s.
The extraordinarily frank and critical comments came more than 20 minutes after the final whistle; the ugly scenes of abuse towards the referee had abated, and the victorious captain, Darragh Donnelly’s speech had long since finished.
Most of Corofin’s players and management team had retired to the sanctuary of the dressing room to lick their wounds but Fitzgerald was still out on the field of play, exchanging opinions with downtrodden Corofin fans.
No doubt they were poring over the injustice of some of the refereeing decisions that went against Corofin: it was a post-mortem with supporters that may have coloured – or even fuelled – what Fitzgerald subsequently said in an interview to Tribune Sport and Galway Bay FM.
The 30-year-old let the official have it with both barrels. Hands on his hips, the full-back looked absolutely bewildered to have lost. Fitzgerald was smiling as he spoke but it was an ironic smile, one of incredulity and disbelief that refereeing decisions had cost him another Connacht medal, and another crack at an All-Ireland.
He shook his head in disbelief as he spoke, and occasionally threw his eyes up to the sky, as if to ask God how he could have let this happen, and said: “Disappointment is an understatement, to be honest with you – the referee was a disgrace to the association today in my opinion. We are bitterly disappointed, we worked so hard and I know Brigid’s did as well but, at the end of the day, all you want is a bit of fair play. I know this sounds like sour grapes but I’m bitterly disappointed in the referee today.
“It (disallowed goal) looked legitimate to me. It looked like a good goal. The referee was running in and had his arm out for a square ball before the ball was even gone in. It looked legitimate, I haven’t seen the video yet and I could be wrong but it looked legitimate.
“We’re bitterly disappointed. Fair dues to Brigid’s and best of look to them in the quarter-final in two week’s time. They’re a Connacht team and we hope they go all the way . . . but when you’re playing a game to this level and when you’re putting in so much work at the end of the day you expect a bit of fair play and I feel myself, as captain of Corofin, we didn’t get that today.”
A spokesperson for the Connacht GAA Council said it would await the receipt of Devenney’s referee’s report before taking any action in relation to the pitch invasion at the final whistle.
The match referee was abused by Corofin supporters who poured onto the field at the final whistle, seething at several controversial decisions that went against the Galway champions.
Fitzgerald’s comments about Devenney’s handling of the match may have been accurate but the scenes that followed the final whistle and overshadowed what went before were equally as disgraceful: Devenney was surrounded by a mob of Corofin supporters, baying for blood as proceedings boiled over.
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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