Archive News
Hotly-anticipated rematch fails to meet expectations
Date Published: {J}
Mountbellew/Moylough 0-10
Micheál Breathnach 0-8
Dara Bradley at Pearse Stadium
Flicking a coin or playing ‘rock-paper-scissors’ would have been a far more entertaining way to settle the impasse between these two rivals.
The Galway senior football championship replay between Mountbellew/Moylough and Micheál Breathnach, evidenced by the healthy crowd in Salthill, was hotly anticipated but it failed to live up to expectations. It was a real anti-climax. Drab, dull, and disappointing.
There was a remarkable lack of intensity on display and – bizarrely given the at times bitter ‘boardroom’ politics that led to the match eventually being replayed – there was an absence of passion from both teams.
The wretched wet and windy elements didn’t lend to free-flowing football either. Instead we got an arm-wrestle, a game of chess, that – to the chagrin of neutrals and the Connemara crowd in attendance – was deservedly won by Mountbellew/Moylough with an error strewn performance that won’t worry any of the title contenders remaining in the competition.
It’s easy to see why the respective negotiators in each club insisted on there being no relegation this season before signing an agreement to replay the clash following third party conciliation at a meeting that lasted over 22 hours Friday week because for long spells both Micheál Breathnach and Mountbellew/Moylough were so poor on Sunday afternoon that whoever lost would have been prime candidates to face the drop.
But you have to wonder how so much effort was put in off the pitch with over 100 days of appeals and politicking; and then both sets of players turn up and perform as if they couldn’t be bothered what the outcome was.
Without the threat of relegation, the lengthy lay-off since the last competitive championship outing, as well as the extreme weather, made for an hour of flat fare that was marked by defensive dominance, where piling as many men behind the ball as possible was the overriding tactic.
Although proceedings on the pitch thankfully passed off without incident – there was scarcely a hard shoulder given never mind a ‘dirty’ challenge – there were times in the packed stand when exchanges between fans verged on ‘heated’.
Mountbellew/Moylough weren’t popular victors but their supporters weren’t exactly magnanimous either and, well, to put it mildly, some of them lacked a bit of class: a small pocket of youngsters goading Micheál Breathnach early on with chants about the ‘illegal’ player, Tommy Ó Conghaile, didn’t endear the black and amber to anyone.
Mountbellew/Moylough’s style of play didn’t win over any neutrals either, but in fairness to them, the North/East Galway outfit were effective.
Their blanket, bunched defence shut-out the Connemara challengers, who scored just two of their eight points from play, all of which were converted by the excellent Peadar Ó Cionnaith.
Mountbellew/Moylough also had the upper hand round centre-field and dominated the aerial battle for kick-outs; kept possession and moved the ball cleverly turning defence into attack with sometimes laborious but highly effective hand passing movements from deep that ended in scores or scoreable frees.
That ultimately was the difference – Mountbellew/Moylough were more penetrating whereas Micheál Breathnach struggled to punch holes in an overcrowded rearguard; and relied too heavily on one player and placed balls.
The winners had a strong wind advantage in the opening half hour but they didn’t really use it, kicking 11 of the match’s 19 wides with six particularly bad wides in the opening quarter.
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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