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Demotion for footballers but donÕt write them off

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Date Published: {J}

THE odds were always loaded against Galway footballers avoiding relegation after losing their opening five National League matches in Division One and while that disappointing reality finally came to pass last Sunday, there is a far more upbeat mood around the county about the team’s championship prospects now compared to only a month ago.

The local outlook began to change when a reshuffled Galway outfit pushed All-Ireland champions Cork hard at Pearse Stadium in March. Tomas Ó Flatharta’s outfit may still have lost the match, but the home team showed no shortage of heart and commitment in producing their most invigorating performance of the campaign so far.

Still, few observers anticipated that the men in maroon would get a result in their next outing away to Armagh in the Athletic Grounds and when they fell four points behind early on, it appeared that a sixth consecutive league defeat was on the cards. By the end of the match, however, Galway won pulling away with wing back Gary Sice delivering a magnificent display, highlighted by three rousing points from play.

There were other factors too in Galway’s unexpected triumph. The return of Padraic Joyce after injury brought extra guile to the attack; Finian Hanley was giving the midfield sector a fresh vibrancy; while Paul Conroy picked off four points from his new full forward base. With the under-rated Cormac Bane grabbing a vital goal, the men in maroon had given themselves an outside chance of avoiding dropping to Division Two ahead of last Sunday’s final round of matches.

Yet, it was always going to be a big ask as not alone did Galway need to beat table toppers Dublin, they were also dependent on results elsewhere falling in their favour. Frankly, when they trailed Pat Gilroy’s unbeaten visitors by 2-8 to 0-6 early in the second-half at Pearse Stadium, it didn’t matter what happened to the two other teams in the relegation mix, Monaghan or Armagh, as the Tribesmen looked doomed to defeat.

Even though Dublin had lost their early goal scorer Alan Brogan to a straight red card after an off-the-ball incident involving Johnny Duane, they led by seven points at the interval against a Galway team which was paying a hefty price for unforced errors and carrying the ball into trouble. Brogan’s goal owed its origins to a stray Eoin Concannon handpass out the field, while Joe Bergin turning over possession near his own posts led directly to Dublin’s second green flag from Pat Burke.

When Bernard Brogan increased their advantage early in the second-half, the Dubs were in cruise control against opponents who were struggling to establish any fluency. The introduction of the fit-again Gareth Bradshaw, however, helped to engineer an unlikely Galway revival with goalkeeper Adrian Faherty, whose kick outs didn’t always find their intended target, making a crucial stop from Brogan to prevent his team from facing an insurmountable deficit. Initially, points from Bane (free), Conroy and Bradshaw gave Galway momentum but, crucially, Dublin custodian Michael Savage denied Conroy a goal midway through the half.

But Galway had their tails up now. Further points followed from Joyce, Conroy and Sice, and when substitute Kevin Brady raised his team’s eighth consecutive white flag without reply seven minutes from time, they were level. Though almost predictably, Dublin regained the lead with a Dean Kelly effort, Galway rallied again and after Bane had equalised, they almost snatched it only for Sice’s effort to just fall short.

While demotion to Division Two is a setback, it’s hardly a disastrous scenario, especially in the context of the Tribemen’s strong finish to the campaign. Galway’s new-look defensive unit of Alan Burke, the promising Colin Forde, Johnny Duane, Gary O’Donnell, Greg Higgins and Sice is still a work in progress but further up the field, the change of scenery for Hanley and Conroy has helped to reinvigorate the team in recent weeks.

During Galway’s troubled start to the league, it must have been tempting for Padraic Joyce, then struggling with a back injury, to walk away from the squad, but the Killererin man has never been an individual for panic decisions and his return to front-line action must have boosted morale too. With better news about Michael Meehan’s ankle injury and Sean Armstrong on the recovery trail as well, Galway are suddenly potential championship dark horses this summer.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

Galway in Days Gone By

The way we were – Protecting archives of our past

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A photo of Galway city centre from the county council's archives

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

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Galway have lot to ponder in poor show

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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.

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Real Galway flavour to intermediate club hurling battle in Birr

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Date Published: 23-Jan-2013

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