Archive News
Harsh lesson for Connacht as mistakes are punished
Date Published: {J}
Connacht 10
Toulouse 36
Rob Murphy at the Sportsground
THE occasion, the crowd and the pageantry all lived up to expectations at the Sportsground on Saturday evening and this has been well documented. Connacht finally took their place at the top table of club rugby and Galway and the Connacht Branch did themselves proud.
The game itself, however, proved to be a harsh lesson in ruthlessly punished mistakes. Toulouse came with a smothering counter attacking game plan and executed it perfectly, but Connacht were far too accommodating in the opening-half and while their second half battling effort meant pride remained intact, those early errors proved key to this defeat.
Let’s look for the devil in the detail and focus in on the first quarter of this contest because that’s the only story that matters. Having lost the opening kick off, Connacht were on the back foot early. Two brilliant touch finders from Connacht’s stand out performer, Gavin Duffy, offered hope and lifted the crowd but they were cameos.
The first penalty came on five minutes from Lionel Beauxis. The position had been garnered by a scintillating break from Luke Burgess, a kick and a handling error from Brian Tuohy under pressure.
Connacht responded well. Adrian Flavin hit his man in the lineout, George Naoupu, Rodney Ah You, Paul O’Donoghue and Mike McCarthy all made yards in their own distinctive styles, but Miah Nikora chose to grubber kick on phase five and Toulouse burst out of their own 22 with a simple inside pass catching the scramble defence on the hop. In fact, but for a marginal forward pass, they would have scored.
That was ominous sign number one and the lesson seemed simple, give the ball away cheaply in the attacking 22 and get ready to defend deep in your own half within seconds. Yet Connacht didn’t heed the warning signs in a tentative and mistake ridden first-half. As good as Toulouse were in that first 40, Connacht stood back in awe and suffered.
A Dave McSharry knock on in an attacking position led to another hugely significant territorial shift with the visitors taking all of 30 seconds to get down field and force a scrum 20 metres out. A drop goal from Beauxis followed and he kicked a second penalty within two minutes after a Yannick Jauzion break had set them on another sweeping attack from the restart.
Restart number five of the game was won deep by the visitors this time and Beauxis proceeded to put in a outrageously good clearance kick that bounced into touch six metres from the Connacht 22. The crowd were sensing the worst at this point.
For a brief moment, however, the momentum turned, Paul O’Donoghue launched a speculative garryowen, the confident Tiernan O’Halloran rose high and fielded spectacularly. Connacht won the penalty. Momentum perhaps? Not really.
The lineout was won but the short side move again involved a little grubber kick, this time from O’Donoghue. A poor poor play call from a strong lineout position that ended with a throw to the visitors as the blocked kick rebounded off the home number nine into touch.
That was that then. Toulouse were down field attacking within a minute and although Connacht won a scrum thanks to Nikora and John Muldoon holding up Clement Poitrenaud in the tackle, the game’s first try came from that very set piece on 20 minutes.
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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