Archive News
Gold medals for Costello, Quirke and Lally at Track & Field finals
Date Published: 06-Jun-2012
THE cream of the country’s top young athletes were in action at the Aviva Irish Schools Athletic Association Track and Field finals at Tullamore over the weekend, and Galway competitors proudly took their place amongst this elite bunch, eventually coming home with a haul of eight medals, three of them gold, and a number of excellent performances.
Star performer of the day was probably Dunmore CS student Laura Ann Costello who ran brilliantly to capture the Junior 100m title, and then followed up this performance later in the day with another medal winning performance in the 200m, where she finished a close second to the girl from Ballymena, Roisin McGuckian whom she had earlier relegated to second in the 100m.
Alanna Lally, from Presentation Athenry, was another dual medal winner on the day as she first powered her way to the Inter 300m gold medal before following this up later in the day with a storming anchor leg for her schools 4x100m relay team, guiding them from fifth place to third in the home straight to take the bronze medal.
Indeed it was a great day for Presentation Athenry, as the first gold medal winner of the day was another athlete from that school, Evan Quirke, clearing 5.78m to win the Junior Long Jump in a very close competition.
The Senior Boys 400m Hurdles race proved to be one of the landmark events of the day, featuring the European Youth Champion, Ben Kiely from Waterford, The Tailteann Schools Inter-Provincial Champion, Evan Maguire from St. Joseph’s Galway and the reigning Irish Intermediate Schools Champion, Anthony Hebron from St. Mary’s in Galway.
It was a fantastic race with the two Galway athletes really putting it up to the outstanding Waterford student, but in the end having to run from the outside lane proved a hurdle too much for Hebron as he faded to unluckily finish fourth, while Kiely proved just too strong for Maguire, pipping him for gold in the final run in. St. Mary’s did have a measure of consolation later in the day however, as Junior athlete Samuel Samson ran a great tactical race to finish third in the 800m.
The final Galway medal winners came in the very last race of the day as the fast finishing Senior Boys 4x100m relay team from St. Enda’s College, anchored by Ben Cooney, ran a great race to take the silver medal and finish off what was a great day’s athletics.
Of course it’s not all about winners, and throughout the day there were a number of excellent performances from other Galway athletes, most notably from Colaiste Iognaid’s Maebh Brannigan who finished fifth in the Senior 1500m, Caomhan Conaghan from Loughrea VS who finished 6th in the Inter Triple Jump and 7th in the High Jump, and Emmet Creavan from the same schools who managed 5th in the Senior Triple Jump.
There was also another great run from Junior Cross Country champion Padraig Creaven from St. Mary’s as, knowing the 1500m race was too short for him, he made the brave sprint for home from 700m out and, then, just saw his efforts fail as he faded to fifth in the final run to some faster finishing athletes.
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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