Archive News
GAA must strive to ensure fans can always mix it up
Date Published: {J}
One of the things that traditionally makes the GAA great is the sight at even the biggest games of fans mixing freely before during and after matches – you may in theory have separate blocks of the stadium, but the reality is that all are welcome in the mix.
Compare that with soccer – particularly in the UK – were rival fans have to travel on separate trains, they’re kept apart by policemen on horseback, they aren’t allowed into the same pubs and visiting fans are normally detained at the venue for half an hour after games to allow the home fans to disperse without any aggro.
That’s why last week’s request from the Dr Crokes club in Killarney to the GAA to segregate supporters on safety grounds at their upcoming All-Ireland senior semi-final against Crossmaglen Rangers at Portlaoise is such a sorry day.
It’s not Crokes’ fault because they clearly feel there is a threat to their fans and panel members – and history is on their side to prove it – but it represents the thin end of the wedge that would ultimately destroy one of the great attributes of the GAA.
Of course this is an isolated incident and safety must come first, but anyone who has experienced the joy of an All-Ireland Final, the walk up Jones Road, the pint in Drumcondra and the magnanimity afterwards of fans from the defeated county will worry at this threat to one of Ireland’s most endearing qualities.
In fairness, the same can equally be said of rugby where fans mingle all weekend long and there is never a hint of trouble – the Leinster fans who descended in droves on Galway last New Year’s Day were a credit to their team and their province and they provided an unexpected mini windfall for the city’s publicans in the process.
Irish fans have been made welcome in Edinburgh or Cardiff – and even Paris or London although the sheer scales of those cities dilutes the effect – and we in turn have enjoyed great occasions when they come here to us.
The Heineken Cup has brought that out of the capital cities into the rest of the country, and that, in many ways, is the lasting memory of Connacht’s recent odyssey.
But the atmosphere in Cardiff can be very different when it’s soccer teams involved – even for as meaningless a match as the Community Shield curtain raiser that barely raises a flicker of expectation among the competing clubs.
While Wembley was closed for rebuilding, Cardiff was the venue for this annual clash and I travelled there one August for a clash between Chelsea and Liverpool (in the days when Liverpool qualified for events like this).
As a Liverpool fan travelling with Chelsea supporters, I wasn’t stupid enough to wear my colours outwardly – but equally I wasn’t wearing blue.
In the pubs beforehand, Liverpool fans were welcome in the city centre and Chelsea fans were to the other side of the ground – and if you weren’t wearing your team’s colours, you had to show your match ticket to prove you weren’t an opposition fan with a death wish going into a rival pub to take on a thousand all-comers.
That never happens with GAA because inter-county rivalry stays inside the ground and, even then, rarely does amount to anything more than sharp wit or the occasion flying insult. The final whistle is invariably greeted with a handshake of congratulations and slap on the back.
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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