Archive News
GalwayÕs poor performance is real head scratcher
Date Published: {J}
SO many questions: so few damn answers. I can now finally empathise with the frustrations of previous Galway hurling team managers such as Jarlath Cloonan, Mattie Murphy, Noel Lane, Conor Hayes and Ger Loughnane after a dreadful performance in the All-Ireland quarter-final at Thurles last Sunday. It was a shambles – short and simple.
As the team manager, I have no intention of running away from my own responsibility for such a limp exit from the championship and I appreciate, more than anyone, my own head is on the chopping block this week. I have no issue with that at all as we operate in a results driven business. Frankly, I didn’t see such a shocking display coming.
There was no question whatsoever of under-estimating Waterford after their humiliation at the hands of Tipperary in the Munster final down in Pairc Ui Chaoimh two weeks previously. We know there would be a backlash from them and I genuinely thought that we were braced for it. Furthermore, we were coming into the fixture on the front foot after two heartening victories over Clare and Cork.
Apart from the injured Alan Kerins, we had the same team out on the field in Semple Stadium as we had in Pearse Stadium and the Gaelic Grounds, but they weren’t the same players which had performed with such vigour, cohesiveness and energy as against Clare and Cork. They looked sluggish and, apart from a brief period in the opening-half, never played with conviction or purpose.
To be honest, I would imagine the players are disgusted with themselves this week. They are way better than Sunday’s tame effort, but just didn’t measure up on the day. Galway had serious momentum heading into the Waterford game and confidence had been restored only to see them produce a really poor effort which was characterised by basic errors, poor decision-making and a lack of fire.
In the context of their previous two championship outings, it’s hard to rationalise where it came from. We had won back the hearts and minds of the Galway supporters who had travelled in such great numbers to Thurles only to throw it all away in a forgettable 70 minutes. I really felt for the fans – they deserved and expected better than this.
Naturally, we are all being panned by the critics and, to be honest, we have left ourselves wide open for it. The camp had worked so hard to get things back on the road after the disappointing defeat to Dublin in the Leinster Championship in Tullamore and most observers were starting to consider us as a genuine threat to Tipperary and Kilkenny.
More immediately, few gave Waterford any real chance of stopping Galway last Sunday, but, unfortunately, every game is different.
Did the pressure get to Galway again? Can they not cope with high expectations? Do they have a suspect temperament? Why are they so frustratingly inconsistent? These are all questions which have been asked so regularly over the past 20 years and still, it seems, we are no nearer any solutions. But, perhaps, the biggest elephant room in the room is that Galway are regularly not cutting it in the really high stakes matches and that successive teams are overhyped due to the county’s impressive record at under-age evel and in the All-Ireland Club series.
In nearly 130 years of championship hurling, Galway have won a measly four All-Ireland senior titles, but yet nearly every spring, the county are generally regarded as third or fourth favourites to bring the McCarthy Cup back west. Where is this inflated rating coming from? The harsh reality is that Galway have only contested two All-Ireland semi-finals in the past decade and that is the grim fact of the situation.
Naturally, a Kevin Moran inspired Waterford deserve a lot of credit for the manner in which they have responded to their Munster final mauling. True, Galway made it all too easy for them, but Davy Fitzgerald and his team were determined to salvage their reputations with Shane Walsh, the recalled Seamus Prendergast and Michael ‘Brick’ Walsh also playing big roles in one of the county’s greatest ever victories.
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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