Archive News
Galway quick to finish job
Date Published: 22-May-2012
IT was all over after 20 minutes. A devastating opening period of fast, open and attractive football by the Tribesmen burst Roscommon’s bubble at Hyde Park on Sunday; there really was no way back from 2-6 to 0-2 down, regardless of the 50 minutes remaining on the clock.
Galway fell asleep for the middle chunk of the first round Connacht championship match, Roscommon rallied a bit, but once the cool heads of Padraic Joyce and Michael Meehan – both received a rapturous reception, particularly the Caltra man who has been cursed with injuries for the past three years – entered the fray, the Tribesmen sealed the deal in some style.
“No, we’re going to get totally carried away now,” quipped manager Alan Mulholland sarcastically in the wake of the 14 points, 3-15 to 0-10, victory when it was suggested Galway will have to keep their feet firmly on the ground, given the inadequacy of their opponents.
Roscommon were poor, very poor. The usual hostile reception reserved for the maroon and white jersey at Hyde Park never materialised.
The atmosphere among the home support was muted, nervy even. The attitude of the team was the same: The Rossies were a yard or two off the pace of the game from the throw-in and paid the ultimate price for failing miserably to match Galway’s high intensity.
The Roscommon players were subdued, the in-your-face doggedness and tight, aggressive marking wasn’t there; and Galway took full advantage of the spaces. Galway just blitzed the home team, with man-of the match Paul Conroy and Mark Hehir netting early.
“Every team tries to start well. How or what did we do to start well? I don’t know but I just know that this team is sick of being beaten, particularly by a point. That’s been the case in the last two or three years, we’ve lost important games by a point. One way to eradicate that is to be more than a point ahead with a few minutes to go and it’s great that we had that cushion towards the end,” said Mulholland.
Whereas Roscommon were poor in every department, you couldn’t find much to fault with Mulholland’s charges. The full-back line, with championship debutants Kieran McGrath and Keith Kelly in the corners, was the area identified beforehand as possibly being a weak link but it performed solidly, backboned by captain Finian Hanley who led by example, against a high profile attack that included Senan Kilbride and Donie Shine, who admittedly didn’t perform to their standards on the day.
Apart from a few worrying moments when Cathal Cregg made some threatening runs, centre-back Johnny Duane was a rock while Gareth Bradshaw and Gary O’Donnell did all that was asked of them defensively and offered a real threat going forward, too.
The early injury to Michael Finneran was a blow to Roscommon but that can’t take away from Joe Bergin’s towering performance at centre-field, one of the Mountbellew/
Moylough man’s best displays for his county in the championship in a few years.
Gary Sice was menacing at wing-forward, chipping in with 1-3, and Paul Conroy, the St James’ clubman, was in absolutely devastating form. The city man used his physicality to dominate the aerial battled on the edge of the square where he had full-back Niall Carty in all sorts of bother. His goal, after claiming a long-ball from club mate Duane, was pure class – his nose for the net was instinctive, and it’s a shame you couldn’t bottle it.
All in all it was great to see Galway back playing with a bit of flair and passion. Galway badly needed this win, to boost morale among the supporters and to restore some confidence to the players as well.
But Mulholland acknowledged afterwards, it’s only one win and Sligo, managed by former Galway footballer, Kevin Walsh, in the semi-final on Saturday, June 9, at Pearse Stadium, offers a tougher test.
“We know Kevin (Walsh) is waiting in the wings with Sligo. Kevin knows Galway football better than I know Galway football, probably, so it’s going to be hell for leather against them and we’re going to have it all to do to beat Sligo the next day but, look, we’re going to draw confidence from this. We’re not going to say ‘look, we have to pretend that we didn’t play well’, it was fantastic to play well and hopefully we build on that and play better the next day – that’s the challenge,” he said.
For a full match report and photos see pages 30 & 31 of this week’s Sentinel
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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