Archive News
Historic and memorable night but more to come
Date Published: {J}
Dara Bradley
BE honest: you didn’t expect this.
The Green Army filed out of Twickenham’s pubs shortly after teatime last Friday and walked briskly towards The Stoop, home of Harlequins, as the last of the South West London rush-hour traffic streamed by. They travelled to the backyard of English Premiership league leaders and seasoned Heineken Cup campaigners more in hope than in expectation.
For Connacht Rugby’s first foray in Europe’s elite club competition, there was a party atmosphere among the away supporters – like giddy teenagers joining their elders in a nightclub for the first time ever.
The air of excitement and anticipation was tinged with a fear of the unknown, fear of failure, fear of being on the end of an unmerciful – and possibly embarrassing – hiding.
After all, Eric Elwood’s men flew to London on the back of four straight RaboDirect PRO 12 losses, including a comprehensive defeat at Ravenhill the previous weekend, which could have been worse had Ulster not turned butchering try opportunities into an art-form.
It wasn’t the sort of record that would inspire confidence; visiting fans still had faith but not much. A minute’s silence followed by the trumpet call of the Last Post, to mark the anniversary of the ending of World War One, Armistice Day, heightened the sense of occasion – and the tension.
Nerves were eased slightly when a long-range penalty from Connacht fly-half Miah Nikora cancelled out Quins’ dead-ball specialist, New Zealander Nick Evans’ early penalty.
Then came a moment of magic; the moment when Connacht signalled its arrival on European club rugby’s biggest stage: a powerful and aggressive Connacht scrum – it was solid all night – got a push on, and set the platform for the backline to sparkle, with Galway city native Eoin Griffin, linking with his fellow Connacht academy star, Tiernan O’Halloran, to put the Clifden native through to score the province’s first ever Heineken Cup try. Two young home grown talents making names for themselves with Europe’s rugby World watching.
The few hundred Connacht fans bunched together in the North Stand, behind the goal, perfectly positioned to view the touchdown, erupted. They went bananas. Rightly so.
The small pockets of Connacht resistance swamped by the home-crowd in the South, West and East stands, went wild, too. The celebrations were sparked as much out of relief as utter joy, and more than a fair share of pleasurable shock. Nikora added the extras to send Connacht into a surprise 10-6 lead.
Even when Connacht were under pressure,Fields of Athenry echoed around the ground; as did chants of Óle, Óle, Óle, although the latter probably had more to do with news filtering through of the national soccer side’s European play-off heroics in Estonia.
The Quins’ faithful were stunned into silence: this wasn’t in the script for the side that had 10 wins from 10 since the 2011/2012 got underway. It was evident Connacht came to play, not limit the damage. They unleashed their backline as often as possible, and though it didn’t always work – the home defence kept delivering the big hits, stifling forward momentum – it was encouraging to see the westerners play with ambition and with belief.
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
