Archive News
Galway players already tuning in to final replay
Date Published: 12-Sep-2012
CIARAN TIERNEY
Did Galway get out of jail? Did Kilkenny leave a 34th All-Ireland title behind them when James Skehill saved Colin Fennelly’s rasper or Henry Shefflin opted to strike his late penalty over the bar? Does it matter? What really counted is that the Tribesmen had three weeks to get it right for the replay when the final whistle sounded at Croke Park on Sunday.
The Galway hurlers have given their followers a Summer to treasure and, unlike virtually all the ‘experts’, they really believed they could beat the greatest team of all time in what was the first senior final for 12 of the 15 starting players.
That attitude was evident when they emerged from the dressing-room and headed for the team bus. Cancel the hotel function and the homecoming, and maybe even the odd wedding or holiday, there is still an All-Ireland to be won on September 30.
When asked if they would like to talk, some of the players politely refused and said they would rather wait until the replay is done and dusted and their ‘mission impossible’ is completed. Both Man of the Match Iarla Tannian and his midfield partner, Andy Smith, said they would talk when the Liam McCarthy Cup was on its way back across the Shannon.
It’s that kind of attitude which saw the men in maroon make a mockery of the widely held belief that the 2011 champions would tear their challenge to shreds as revenge for the Leinster final. Well, it certainly didn’t feel that way until the Cats took control in the third quarter of the game.
The Tribesmen never gave up, even when they found themselves a point down two minutes into injury time. Galway captain Fergal Moore paid tribute to the attitude of his younger colleagues and the fearlessness of Joe Canning when he nailed that last-gasp free into the Hill 16 goals to ensure the sides would have to meet again.
“We were in our first All-Ireland final against a team that has been in a good few of them in the last few years and won most of them. We are delighted to have that chance and we’re looking forward to it now,” said Moore.
“We were always going to keep going to the finish. The only score that matters is the final score. All the kudos goes to Joe. It was an unbelievable pressure free at the end and he put it straight over the black spot. We live to fight another day and we’re delighted to do so.”
Whereas in other years, a Galway team might have wilted in the face of such sustained second half pressure from the reigning champions, Moore was delighted that his team kept fighting to the finish – even when so much went against them in the 20 minutes before Niall Burke’s inspirational goal.
“You get that on the big occasion. There are going to be chances missed on both ends. But we kept going to the final whistle, which is something that a lot of Galway teams haven’t done in the past. We kept fighting and we’ve got ourselves a chance of another day out,” he said.
The theory that the side playing their seventh All-Ireland final in a row would be too strong and too focused for such an inexperienced Galway side was put to bed by the 22nd minute when a wonderful Niall Burke score made it 1-5 to 0-2 for the rank outsiders. They certainly were not overawed by the experience of playing in front of almost 82,000 fans.
“We are an improving team all the time. We are gaining experience day-in, day-out. It was a huge occasion for us today. It was a big step up, the pace of the game and everything. I thought our young fellows responded very well and it can only improve them,” said Moore.
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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