Archive News
Football legend Joyce hangs up the boots
Date Published: 29-Nov-2012
ONE of Gaelic football’s greatest forwards of modern times – Killererin’s Padraic Joyce – has this week officially confirmed his retirement from inter-county football, calling time on a career that has spanned three decades.
The three times All-Star winner made his last appearance for Galway in the All-Ireland qualifiers this Summer in Casement Park, when Antrim recorded a surprise success over Alan Mulholland’s side.
Joyce (35), will however be remembered as one of the greatest ever forwards to come out of Galway football, producing two classic attacking displays in the 1998 All-Ireland success against Kildare (1-14 to 1-10), when he scored 1-1, and in the 2001 defeat of Meath (0-17 to 0-8) when he landed 10 points.
That 2001 success was a special one for the Joyce family in that Padraic’s brother, Tommie, also lined out at corner forward on the team managed by John O’Mahony.
A product of the St. Jarlath’s College footballing academy, where he won a Hogan Cup medal in 1994 when defeating St. Patrick’s Maghera in the All-Ireland final, he went on to represent Galway at all levels.
He scooped All-Star awards in 1998, 2000 and 2001, and would probably have picked up at least a couple more, had Galway not entered one of their valley periods in terms of championship success over the past decade.
Texaco footballer of the year in 2001, when he ‘ran away’ with the top scorers accolade in that championship series, he also played 11 times with the Irish International Rules side against Australia, captaining them in 2004 and 2005.
First and foremost, Joyce was an absolutely dedicated club footballer, always ‘pushing out the boat’ to drive on Killererin to success in the Galway championships.
Joyce was a seminal figure in Killererin’s four county final successes in 1999, 2004, 2007 and 2010 – this year he was the top scorer ‘by a country mile’ in the Galway senior football championship.
A complete ‘natural’ with the ball, Joyce complemented this talent with an absolute dedication to the game, that helped keep him as one of the country’s top forwards over the past 15 years.
He formed a great partnership and understanding with his former St. Jarlath’s colleague, Michael Donnellan – another of the game’s outstanding individual talents – through the late 1990s and for a good chunk of the following decade.
It is not clear whether Joyce will continue to play club football with Killererin, but the nephew of former Galway star, Billy Joyce, is expected to make up his mind on that issue early in the New Year.
A six times Connacht title winner – 1998, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2005 and 2008 – he is one of the Galway forwards that will forever be mentioned in the same breath as a Sean Purcell, Frank Stockwell, John Keenan or Michael Donnellan.
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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