Archive News
Galway loses sporting icon
Date Published: {J}
Keith Kelly
PEOPLE say you should never meet your heroes, as you’ll invariably be disappointed. That is not always the case.
Eamon ‘Chick’ Deacy, who died on Monday morning from a suspected heart attack, was a hard tackling man from back the West, the finest footballer this city and county has ever produced. He was my hero, and a hero to countless other people.
Chick was very much a hero to his family. The youngest of 10 children born to Christine and Miko Deacy of High Street in Galway City, where Deacy’s Fish Shop stands today. The family soon moved to St John’s Terrace, off Henry Street.
It was Miko who was unintentionally responsible for the nickname ‘Chick’, as his brother Don recalled this week.
“There was 10 of us in the family – Michael, George, Mary, Neil, Ernie, Tommy, Dixie (RIP), myself, Dessie (RIP) and Eamon. We hadn’t a lot of money, so it was Eamon who was brought everywhere by Dad, and we were fine with that, that was just the way it was.
“He’d sleep in the bed with Mam and Dad when he was a baby and Mam would be terrified that Eamon would be crushed – he was such a slight, skinny little thing, and my father was a big man. Dad used to call Eamon his ‘little chicken’, he’d go looking for him as ask ‘did ye see chicken?’, and we took up on that, shortened it to ‘Chick’, and the name stuck,” Don said.
There are both tears and laughter as Don recalls some anecdotes involving Chick, such as the time he told his younger brother to buy a Lotto ticket as the jackpot was around €8 million.
“He said to me ‘what would I want with €8m’, and I said ‘you could always give it to me’ and he had a good laugh at that.
“We played together for West United, and I remember after one game as we were going to the pub, he gave me a tenner and warned me not to go buying drinks for the pub, but to use it for myself. Then when we went in, he bought a round for everyone – that was the kind of person he was, he was always giving,” he said.
Some of Don’s best memories revolve around the West United side that won the Connacht Senior Cup in 1975, which featured three of the Deacy brothers – Des, Don and Chick.
“Des was outside right, I was right full, and Eamon was right half. We were playing a game in Castlebar, and this fella Chick was marking was crucifying him, he was giving him an awful time. Myself and Des said to him ‘leave him to us, we’ll sort him out’ but Chick said no, he’d look after himself.
“A couple of minutes later he floored yer man with a tackle, and he had to be stretchered off, but typical of Eamon, as we were celebrating on the bus on the way home, all that was worrying him was if yer man was okay – that was Eamon, whatever happened on the pitch, stayed on the pitch,” Don says.
* * * * * *
He was a hero to the people of the West, and to West United, the club with which he started, and ended, his career. Club chairman Patsy O’Connor recalled this week how Chick captained the side that won the first-ever U-11 trophy in Galway, and even then, those back the West knew they were watching a special player.
“He stood out, even at that early stage. That team had some great players, but Chick was that extra bit special. When he returned to the club in 1992, he really inspired the young lads in the area, he really lifted the club, and there was a great buzz around the West
“He was a great role model for young people, he used to train every day, and he set a great example,” O’Connor said.
For more, read this week’s Galway City 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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