Galway In Days Gone By

1920

Racing optimism

On page six we give the entries for the two principal events at the Galway meeting of 1920. These and the figures we published a week ago indicate that the meeting will outrival all previous records.

Ballybrit has been gaining fame from year to year. Six years ago, it was held under the shadow of the outbreak of the greatest war the world has known. The morrow was uncertain, the first money panic had begun, and students of affairs looked out upon a clouded horizon.

But Galway “carried on” bravely, and the famous week rant its course. Already there is gloomy speculation as to this year’s fixture, but there is an old axiom that “it is time enough, etc.”

The Cassandras love to indulge in gloomy prophecy, but the Race Committee is taking the sensible view, and proceeding with the preliminaries on a scale commensurate with the importance that will attach to this year’s event.

If the worst comes to the worst, and the railways bring us no passengers, the owners will find a way, and the sport-loving West will recognise that difficulties were made to be overcome.

The resources of a sporting people cannot be exhausted. “What did we do before James Watt made it possible to travel by steam?” asked an insuppressible optimist.

Bookeen siege

Rescued in the nick of time, seven policemen who had withstood a continuous siege lasting over two hours, escaped from the burning police barracks at Bookeen, County Galway, in the early hours of Friday morning.

The little garrison on the roadside station, about a mile from the main highway between Athenry and Loughrea, and six miles from the former town, numbered nine men, but one was absent in hospital on Thursday night and the other away.

The barracks was fortified in the usual way. It stood in a remote part of County Galway, the only other important building in the neighbourhood being a country church.

On Thursday night the customary preparations were being made for attack, trees being felled to blockade the approaching roads, and walls being built across them.

About midnight the station was attacked by rifle and revolver fire, and an attempt was made to blow it up and set it on fire.

The seven policemen stood to arms and replied with vigour, hurling hand grenades in the direction from which the fire of their invisible assailants came, but they were hampered by their surroundings and could not make an effective defence.

Meanwhile, Verey lights were sent up for help, and these with the sound of the high explosive rockets and the detonation of the bombs, made a deafening din.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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