Archive News
Galway footballers have much work to do
Date Published: {J}
IT’S doubtful if Galway footballers have dug themselves out of a bigger hole in modern times than they defiantly did at Pearse Stadium last Sunday. Five points in arrears as a wind-spoiled Connacht championship semi-final drifted into injury time, the Tribesmen somehow managed to live and fight for another day.
Sure, Galway were extremely fortunate – on the run of the game – to force a replay against Sligo at Markievicz Park, but they had gone two months without a competitive fixture while the harsh dismissal of Sean Armstrong early in the second-half compounded the difficulties for the home team who could only manage a solitary point from play in a forgettable opening-half for Joe Kernan’s charges.
Once again, it was the long serving Padraic Joyce who ultimately bailed Galway out of trouble. Apart from his tally of six points, including a cracking individual effort in the 49th minute, it was his pass which paved the way for young Eoin Concannon’s excellently taken goal in injury time. Moments later a trip on Michael Meehan led to wing back Gareth Bradshaw to sending over the equaliser from a close range free.
Not even the team’s most optimistic supporter could have imagined such a dramatic turnaround in the closing minutes and hundreds of them had already departed the ground before the men in maroon pulled the game out of the fire. It doesn’t really matter that this was a largely sluggish and laboured display from Galway as the bottom line in sport is the result.
Granted, they will have to show a major improvement for Saturday evening’s replay, but that’s the challenge now for the team management and players over the coming days. Galway could have had no complaints if they had been beaten on home soil by Sligo for the first time since 1923, but they hung in there and must be given huge credit for the character and resilience they showed in rescuing a desperate situation.
I hate match days which are dictated by a strong wind. There is no magic formula in these situations as teams wrestle with the decision whether to use the elements or not if they win the toss. At half-time last Sunday, Galway were in a bad place, trailing by 1-8 to 0-2, with many of their players peripheral figures as wind-backed Sligo gradually took a hold of the exchanges.
Frankly, for much of the second-half it appeared that Galway didn’t possess the tactical ingenuity or intensity to haul Sligo back, especially with Kevin Walsh deploying extra man Eamon O’Hara in front of his own posts. Some errant shooting wasn’t helping Galway’s cause either and until Padraic Joyce caught fire with three critical points in quick succession in the third quarter, they had all the appearances of men who believed salvaging a result was beyond them.
Joyce’s scoring burst allowed Galway to hang in there but when man of the match, fleet-footed corner forward David Kelly, fired over his third point to put Sligo five up in the 69th minute, it appeared odds on that we were about to have the first Connacht final not featuring Galway or Mayo since Roscommon defeated Sligo in the provincial decider of 1947.
Somehow, Galway possessed enough bottle and heart to save the day. Joyce sent over his third point of play before combining with Joe Bergin to put Concannon in the clear for that priceless goal. Though there was now only less than a minute of injury time remaining, it was virtually inevitable that Galway would manage to engineer the equaliser and that’s what exactly Michael Meehan, introduced as a second-half substitute, did.
For more, see 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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