Archive News
Heroic Galway devastated by agonising loss
Date Published: {J}
Dara Bradley
TUESDAY afternoon, two days after Galway’s agonising one-point defeat to Tipperary in the All-Ireland quarter-final, and the losing captain Shane Kavanagh is still raw.
“It’s still sheer devastation. And it will be worse it’s going to get in the short-term when we realise there’s no training to go to during the week and we won’t be meeting. It will be worse again when we watch the championship progress with us not being there. It’s devastation.
Next year seems such a long, long way off,” said the Kinvara man.
After collectively playing heroically in a cliff-hanger; going so close only to lose by a point, in injury time, the mood in the Tribesmen’s Croke Park dressing room was understandably grim. The worst Kavanagh, and probably most of this group, has ever experienced.
It was even worse than last year, when Galway let a six-point final quarter lead slip and lost to Waterford by a point at the same stage of the competition.
Words won’t do justice to the atmosphere and pain of the dressing room but Kavanagh gave Tribune Sport an insight into what it was like, as the players and management gathered immediately after the final whistle.
“It was a killer. Lads were just devastated. Some lads weren’t able to take it at all and they’re still struggling with it. The dressing room on Sunday was the worst I’ve ever been in. We just couldn’t believe we were going into the dressing room after losing,” he said.
“There was sheer devastation – a lot of lads just broke down. It meant so much to everyone, grown men just couldn’t contain their emotion. John Mac (McIntyre) spoke. He was devastated. Everyone was getting so emotional. I spoke, and the main point I was trying to get across was that we have to stick together.
“We’d been training so hard all year. The break of a ball, a bit of luck went Tipp’s way and in an instant, three minutes, three points and we’re back to square one. We lost the match. Out of the championship. It’s really hard to take.
Pat McDonagh (managing director of Supermac’s, sponsors of the Galway senior hurling team) spoke. He said time is a great healer. It’s difficult to even think of next year but by and large we’re a young group of men and hopefully the management will stay on again for another year and we’ll stick together.”
The long-serving legend Ollie Canning was another man who addressed the room. His speech was poignant, as he told the group that he may never play for Galway again.
The 33-years-old Portumna man indicated the only reason he was playing inter-county hurling in 2010 was because he felt Galway, under this backroom team and with this group of players, would achieve success this year.
While Canning didn’t categorically retire – and was equivocal about it when doing radio interviews this week – the odds on seeing him in a maroon and white jersey ever again are slim.
Canning’s speech and the painful manner in which they lost, clearly shook Galway boss McIntyre, who, eyes bloodshot, was an emotional wreck when he came out and addressed reporters. “I just left the Galway dressing room – absolute devastation,” he said with a quivering voice.
“We fronted up to Tipperary today. We left everything out on the field. I know we lost the game today but I’ve never been as proud of the Galway players as I am this evening. We may have lost the match but we’ve lost no honour.
“I think Galway have answered a lot of the question marks that have been posed about them over the years. There was no shortage of character, commitment, honesty or courage out there today. Maybe Tipperary’s experience of playing in an All-Ireland final last year and the devastation that that result caused, maybe that stood to them in the final furlong today.
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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