Archive News
Footballers can expect nothing handy in Hyde Park
Date Published: 16-May-2012
IT’S been four years since Roscommon and Galway last squared up to each other in the Connacht senior football championship, but that forgettable encounter in Pearse Stadium produced one of the most one-sided encounters in the history of the provincial title race with the Tribesmen cantering home on a 2-16 to 0-6 margin.
That was a dark day for Roscommon football, but two summers later they had regrouped sufficiently to capture their 20th Connacht title when edging out Sligo and were also back in the final last year only to just fall short against Mayo (0-13 to 0-11). Though still languishing in Division Three of the National League after only winning four of their seven group encounters in the spring, the county’s fortunes are generally on an upward curve.
Roscommon have gradually been getting their football house in order again, investing heavily in under-age development over the past five or six years and the success of that initiative is reflected in the All-Ireland minor triumph of 2006, together with their progress to the recent U-21 showdown when they gave Dublin’s highly regarded outfit a serious rattling in Tullamore. Overall, it is arguable that Roscommon have the best young talent coming through in the province.
Former inter-county player Des Newton is now at the Roscommon helm and, like his squad, is bound to relish Sunday’ championship against Galway in Hyde Park. They are physically strong in most sectors and Donal Shine, if on a going day, can prove a handful for the best of opposition defences. With St. Brigid’s also claiming the Connacht Club title last winter, the least Roscommon supporters will be expecting is a high-energy show on the team’s home turf.
It’s a fixture which has danger written all over it for a Galway outfit which produced their best performances in the opening and closing matches of the county’s Division Two campaign. New boss Alan Mulholland could have been forgiven for thinking that senior management wasn’t such a pressurised zone after all when they upset the odds against Derry in Celtic Park last February. It represented a flying start to Galway’s league campaign, but seven days later they were fortunate to escape with a draw at home to Louth.
Subsequently, Mulholland must have been wondering what he had let himself in for when they suffered a shock defeat to a struggling and understrength Westmeath side in Mullingar, but the Salthill man kept his cool, publicly at least, and they managed to turn things around with victories over Meath and Monaghan, together with an honourable display in defeat against Division Two pace setters Tyrone.
The upshot was that Galway had still every chance of making the Division Two final and, in the process, having the opportunity of earning a quick-fire return to the league’s top flight when hosting Kildare in Pearse Stadium in early April. However, trailing by four points at the interval having played with the wind, the men in maroon looked a beaten docket, only to really catch fire on the resumption with some swashbuckling and high quality football. Ultimately, they were unluckily denied victory when John Doyle netted an equalising penalty in injury time.
Galway have been lying relatively low in the interim and while injuries have come and gone, the removal of Nicky Joyce from the squad last month for lacking the necessary application was an important statement of intent by the team management.
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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