Archive News
Fitzgerald and Coleman exit adds to GalwayÕs woes
Date Published: {J}
FRANK FARRAGHER
A ROPEY start to the season for Galway footballers looks like getting tougher following the news over the weekend that Corofin’s Kieran Fitzgerald – one of the team’s three captains – and Niall Coleman have left the panel.
It all makes for a tough trip North on Sunday for new manager Tomás Ó Flatharta as Galway face All-Ireland finalists Down on their home turf of Newry (2.30), following a five point defeat at the hands of Monaghan in Clones.
Officially Fitzgerald has quit the panel because of long standing injury problems and Coleman due to work commitments but already – with Valentine’s Day barely out of the way – there is speculation of problems in the Galway camp.
Killererin’s Nicky Joyce – arguably the best forward in the club championship of 2010 with the exception of cousin Padraic – hasn’t rejoined the panel while Corofin’s Damien Burke is also not involved with the squad.
On top of all that, Michael Meehan’s ankle injury, suffered in the Connacht semi-final championship replay against Sligo in Markievicz Park last Summer, looks set to keep him out of action for most, if not all of, the league campaign while Padraic Joyce is also on the injured list and seems unlikely to feature in the next two to three league games at least.
Corofin’s Kieran Fitzgerald is one of the game’s most honest players and it is no secret that he has consistently been put through the pain barrier over the past few seasons due to an ongoing upper leg problem that hasn’t responded to treatment.
However what is slightly difficult to read for the Galway football public is the fact that the All-Star from 2001, made the big decision at the start of the season to be included in the panel and secondly to accept the one third share of the captaincy.
The Corofin clubman did not have a good day in Clones last Sunday week, on admittedly a top class forward in the lightning fast Conor McManus, making way at half-time for David Reilly.
Fitzgerald though may have taken a genuinely personal decision that the battle against his injury was just unwinnable at inter-county level, where those few yards of pace can be critical. His parting with Galway is believed to have been amicable.
Niall Coleman did come on for Cillian de Paor against Monaghan in the second half, but again the Annaghdown clubman was introduced into attack, and this never has been his favourite position.
Coleman – another fiercely committed player – has never been a happy camper in the half forward role and may have been influenced to sever his inter-county link for this season at least, on the basis that he wasn’t going to get his chance at midfield or possibly the centre back role.
The rumour mill has also been rife this week of other possible defections but it seems likely that ‘the hare will be let sit’ for some time. It may be asking too much to expect a Galway win on Sunday, but a credible performance is an absolute necessity to maintain morale after such a troubled week.
Collectively Galway have trained exceptionally hard since the first days of January but some squad members are known to be of the opinion that the programme has been too physically and endurance orientated, with more football needed in the schedule.
Currently the squad is training four nights a week, Monday through to Thursday, plus the weekends when there isn’t a league match on.
Fitness and preparation programmes are now a science in themselves with individual trainers placing different emphases on areas such as body strength, endurance, agility, pace and ball skills.
The man given this responsibility in Tomás Ó Flatharta’s regime is Stephen Smith, who has a background in rugby team preparation.
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
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
