Archive News
Galway Rowing Club starting to make waves again
Date Published: {J}
One of the highlights of rowing in Galway this year was the performance of Galway Rowing Club at the National Championships in Cork in July. In all, the club captured eight national titles at the prestigious event, underlining that it is, once again, becoming a major force in the sport.
Having resided in the shadows of rowing superpowers NUI Galway and The Tribesmen – and, indeed, a number of other crews locally, such as Coláiste Iognáid (The Jes) and St Joseph’s (The Bish) – Galway Rowing Club looks to be finally establishing a foothold on the podium after a decade or so of mediocrity.
To the fore in the revival has been the club’s Vice President and one of its many coaches, Rory O’Brien, a Limerick City native who moved to the banks of the Corrib approximately 30 years ago. It was not until the late 1990s, though – when one of his daughters took up the sport – that he re-entered the world of rowing and pledged his allegiance to Galway RC.
“For the last 10 years, I have competed with veteran crews, while, for the last two years, I have been coaching women’s junior crews,” explained the former St Michael’s (Limerick) rower. “We had an eight [crew] and we broke it up into everything we could, such as two quads and doubles.
“There was also another lady coaching with me, Sara Brennan. She coached the younger ones – new beginners – and I coached the older ones. Then we combined the entire squad and we came up with this eight, which is unbeaten this year.”
Indeed, the resurgence of the club is very much reflected – and in some ways inspired by – the feats of the J16 women’s eights this year. Having shown well in a number of Head of the River events – such as Sligo and Carrick-on-Shannon – early in the year, they subsequently went on to power to victories at a plethora of regattas, including Limerick and Galway.
The highlight of the year, though, was in July when that crew stormed to victory in both the WJ16 eights and the novice disciplines. The most significant was the latter. Leading the field after the first 500 metres, Galway Rowing Club stormed to a three-length win to become champions of Ireland.
That winning crew consisted of Cox Afric O’Regan, Stroke Fiona Murtagh, Meagan Donnelly, Cara Cunningham, Kellie Wade, Meabh O’Brien, Ruth Cummins, Femhe Caffrey and Claire Elwood. Two of these, Wade and Murtagh, subsequently went on to guide Ireland’s junior four to gold at the Home Internationals at Strathclyde in Scotland.
In addition to the eights win, a number of these young rowers also swelled their individual medal hauls by claiming wins in the WJ16 fours and the WJ15 fours, while Donnelly and another rising star, Claire Caulfield, took home goal in the WJ15 and WJ14 single sculls respectively.
Crowning Galway Rowing Club’s visit to the National Championships were the performances of the young men’s teams, which won both the J16 eights and J16 quads events. Tutored by Paul Thornton, that eights crew comprised Cox Ross Madden, Stroke Nathan Collins, Alan Murtagh, triplets David, Martin and Chris Laffey, Michael Flaherty, Gary Cooney and Conor Curran.
It was the J16 fours victory, in particular, that provided the sweetest success, with the Galway crew out-rowing rivals Tribesmen in the last 300 metres to take gold. “That junior 16 quad was a phenomenal win,” noted O’Brien, as was the performances of his junior women.
“If you look at that junior 16 eights,” continued the Limerick man, “two of them were 14, three of them were 15 and the rest were 16 years old. However, in the novice eights championship, they beat two university crews – NUIG and Queens – and a number of other club crews. There could be five years or more in the age difference and, indeed, some of the other rowers could have been 23 or 24!”
The recent success of Galway Rowing Club he believed came down to both good coaching and a superbly dedicated and talented team of rowers.
“For example, Sara [Brennan] and I coached the junior women. Sara was very strong on the gym stuff and I was very strong on the water stuff, although both of us would be on the water with them all the time. Sara would then see something or I would see something and we would pull them over and try to get it right. In the end, it just seemed to click.
“I mean, technically, these girls were phenomenal and they gelled very well as a crew and a group of buddies. If one went to the pictures, they all went to the pictures. They were very close friends and still are.”
It was O’Brien’s hope that he could keep this talented bunch intact; perhaps even race them at intermediate level in the coming season.
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
images/files/images/x3_Courthouse.jpg
Families queue up for school’s offer of free house
West has lower cancer survival rates than rest
Galway minors continue to lay waste to all opponents
Gardaí and IFA issue a joint appeal on summer road safety
Marathon Man plans to call a halt – but not before he hits 160 races
