Archive News
Galway need to toughen up!
Date Published: 13-Jun-2012
Sligo 2-14
Galway 0-15
FRANK FARRAGHER AT PEARSE STADIUM
ANY notions that Galway footballers were on a short cut back to former glories were well and truly dissipated at Pearse Stadium on Saturday evening when Sligo turned on an intensity tap that powered them to a deserved and, in the end, quite a comprehensive Connacht semi-final victory.
It is not the end of the world for Galway football, and the rebuilding process currently in place must continue, but it was a temporary setback of quite dramatic proportions as Sligo played out a second half with a ferocity and tempo that Alan Mulholland’s side just couldn’t match.
The pre-match odds, which apparently at one point on Saturday had Sligo at 13/2, verged on the insane given the recent championship history of the sides, and as Galway lick their wounds this week they will be mindful of the fact that hunger is the great sauce of championship football.
At different stages of the first half when Galway led by 0-5 to 0-1 and 0-9 to 0-4, they seemed to be on the very cusp of delivering that knock-out blow, but alas it never arrived, and when Sligo regrouped at half-time just four points in arrears, the game was about to undergo one massive sea change.
There are a lot mind games in football and somewhere during that 15 minute half-time break, Galway slipped into a comfort zone where they believed that their main task of the day was done – by contrast, across the dressingroom tunnel, Sligo manager Kevin Walsh ignited rockets of energy in his side and the rest is history.
It was though hard to see at half-time where the Sligo recovery might come from. True, they had defended tenaciously but had conceded a high ratio of frees that Galway took advantage of fully but Kevin Walsh’s side had struggled to get a 40% break from the midfield exchanges.
From limited possession pickings, there were danger signs showing in the Galway defence. David Kelly was very lively in the corner of the Sligo attack, Pat Hughes and Alan Costello were also showing well for the ball, while full forward Adrian Marren was giving Finian Hanley a lot of problems.
Still with Joe Bergin turning in a very strong first half performance in midfield, it did seem improbable that Sligo would win enough primary possession from this sector in the second half to give their lively forward line a consistent supply of ball. What transpired though rocked Galway’s championship ambitions to the core.
Sligo took control of the midfield exchanges with the physical power of young Shane McManus ably complemented by a whole series of second phase possession wins by Charlie Harrison, Paul McGovern, Brendan Egan, Pat Hughes and Alan Costello. Inexorably the bulk of the second period ended up being played in the Galway half of the field.
Adrian Marren’s torment of Finian Hanley and the Galway defence continued into the third quarter, and midway through the half when the sides were level at 0-10 apiece, the whole balance of this game shifted. Sligo were winning breaks everywhere, they were steaming forward in numbers, and Galway just couldn’t match their fervour in the majority of the hand-to-hand combats.
Galway needed to tackle two main problem areas early in the second half – midfield, and the massive influence of Adrian Marren in the heart of the Sligo attack, but the issues largely went unaddressed.
Michael Meehan and Padraic Joyce were introduced to attack, but Galway’s acute difficulties were not in that sector. Something dramatic had to be tried in a bid to curb Sligo’s possession monopoly.
Maybe moves like the introduction of Fionntán Ó Curraoin; a decision to leave Thomas Flynn in a midfield position rather than substituting him with a forward; the pulling back of Gary Sice as a sweeper in front of his own ‘45’, could all have helped to disrupt the Sligo rhythm, while another marker was needed far earlier to try and put Marren off his game.
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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