Archive News
Donnellan calls for fans’ expectations to be kept in check
Date Published: 20-Jun-2012
STEPHEN GLENNON
No matter who Galway face in the Leinster Senior Hurling Final – be it Dublin or All-Ireland champions Kilkenny – Galway forward Cyril Donnellan insists expectation must be tempered following the Tribesmen’s facile 14-point win over Offaly at O’Moore Park, Portlaoise last Sunday.
Three goals in the opening nine minutes from St Thomas’ duo Conor Cooney (2) and David Burke lay the foundation for the Tribesmen’s 5-23 to 3-15 victory, which sets Galway up for their second Leinster final appearance in four years on Sunday, July 8.
However, despite the impressive manner of Galway’s win against Offaly, Donnellan is calling for everyone associated with the maroon and white to firmly keep their feet on the ground.
“We have to be realistic,” said Donnellan, as he chatted to the media after the final whistle on Sunday.
“The other side of the draw was definitely stronger with Kilkenny and Dublin in it. And that is taking nothing away from Offaly. We knew coming up here today that it was going to be a big test and, in fairness, we met it front on.
“However, I think, we are going to find it very tough in a Leinster final, whoever we are playing. Both of those two teams played in an All-Ireland semi-final last year and that is where we want to be getting. Of course, the easiest route into an All-Ireland semi-final is to win Leinster and that is what we will be trying to do.”
Indeed, whatever about All-Ireland quarter-finals or semi-finals, Donnellan vows Galway will give the provincial decider the respect it deserves.
“Sure, it’s massive. Nobody from Galway has a Leinster medal and it is a massive medal to chase.
“You know, the lads inside there [in the dressing-room] feel the importance of it and it was a great move by Galway to come into Leinster. A Leinster medal would be as important to anybody in that dressing-room as anything else they have won. We will be going into the Leinster final with the hope of competing and winning.”
In any event, Donnellan agrees that last Sunday’s win is a case of job done, although he recognises there are areas Galway still need to tighten up on.
“I suppose, it was high scoring enough and we would be happy enough with the performance in the first half. We might have died a bit before half-time, but it is hard enough to keep that intensity up.
“That said, we have three weeks now to work on the fitness heading into the Leinster final. We still have loads to work on, just like the Westmeath game when we also conceded a few goals and at times went out of the game. I suppose, Offaly didn’t really put a major push on us in the second half. I know they got a couple of goals but we were still keeping the scoreboard ticking over down the opposite end.
“So, we are very happy. We said at the outset we wanted to get to a Leinster final. It is the easiest way of getting into the All-Ireland series and that is where we are now and we have three weeks to work on what we need to work on,” concludes Donnellan.
Meanwhile, Galway captain Fergal Moore believes his side can get better and better as the championship progresses. No doubt, having tallied 11 goals in their first two provincial games, they do seem to be heading in the right direction.
“Obviously, goals make a huge difference in the championship and we have been focusing on taking those opportunities,” says Moore on Galway’s six goal tally against Westmeath and their five-goal haul against Offaly.
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
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