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HurlingÕs marathon man plays over seven decades

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Date Published: {J}

ONE suspects that the greats of the game – Cork’s Christy Ring, Limerick’s Mick Mackey, Tipperary’s Jimmy Doyle or Kilkenny’s Eddie Keher – would love to have boasted of the ‘claim to fame’, for want of a better term, of Vice-President of the Galway Hurling Board, Richie Williams.

It’s as simple as this. Williams – now in his late sixties – has fielded at adult level in Galway championship hurling every decade since he first made his appearance as a teenager in the Cussane (Athenry) colours in 1958. It is quite the record.

Williams is modest about the accomplishment and it takes almost two hours of conversation before he even begins to open up about his own exploits in the game. Instead, he prefers to concentrate and chat about Tuam Hurling Club, reciting the history of the club as if he were reading it from the Bible.

However, what Williams fails to realise is that, at least in later years, he has been as much a part of Tuam Hurling Club as Tuam Hurling Club has been a part of him. In many respects, Williams is the embodiment of Tuam HC – a fact underlined by Williams’ willingness to answer the call for the club’s only adult side for their first round tie against Tynagh/Abbey-Duniry in the Junior ‘C’ championship earlier this year.

“Well, we were short,” chuckles the retired Garda, who, coincidentally, was manager of that side. “Very short!”

The Carnaun, Athenry native – who joined the club in the late 70s – relaxes into his armchair. “What happened there were some fellows didn’t make it on time and Michael Walsh – who is as old as myself – and I played in it. I played in the full-forward line.

“Then fellows came but I was there for about 20 or 25 minutes before I went off. Michael was in goal. I thought when the others arrived, that it was grand, but then, in the second half, about five minutes in, this fellow pulled a muscle and I had to go full-back. Needless to say, we were hammered.”

Still, one of the most important things in life and hurling is turning up and for well over a century Tuam – quite often, against all the odds – has been doing that. And Williams, invariably, has always been there to fight the good fight, be it with Cussane or Athenry in the ’50s, ’60s and early ’70s or Tuam in the late ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, 2000s and now 2010s.

“So, I have played every decade from the 50s,” muses Williams, who has also held every office at one time or another with Tuam Hurling Club. “I suppose, once a fool, always a fool!”

Just as Talking Sport is about to chide him for the statement, the Tuam Secretary and County Delegate adds with a smile: “You know, I had a bypass in 2008. So, I thought then my career had almost run its course. I was manager of the junior team this year, though, so that is why it was easy to pick myself!”

No doubt, given his medical background, the conversation he had with his loving wife Patricia that evening was likely to have been an interesting one! By the same token, though, Williams argues that were it not for hurling, he might not be with us today.

Having been down at the pitch one evening, he was pucking around a ball with a clubmate when he got a sharp pain. “I said I better get it checked out,” adds Williams. “So, hurling probably saved my life.”

In any event, it is hard to dispute his love of hurling and this shines through as he alludes to the trials and tribulations of the Tuam club. As far as he is aware, the club was founded in 1903, although he notes hurling was played under the banner of St. Jarlath’s of Tuam prior to this time.

In the ensuing years, the club – located in the football stronghold of North Galway, where their sister club Tuam Stars leads the senior football roll of honour with 24 titles – toiled as best it could with the small ball, although with the turning of the sod on the local sugar factory by Eamon De Valera on November 24, 1933 it looked as if the club’s fortunes were also to change for the better.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.

Galway in Days Gone By

The way we were – Protecting archives of our past

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A photo of Galway city centre from the county council's archives

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

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Galway have lot to ponder in poor show

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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.

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Real Galway flavour to intermediate club hurling battle in Birr

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Date Published: 23-Jan-2013

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