Archive News
Improved performance goes without reward as Galway United lose again
Date Published: {J}
Galway United 0
Bohemian FC 3
Keith Kelly
Another game, another defeat, but despite suffering their 27th loss in the League this season, the dedicated 600-plus souls who haven’t given up on their local side were given a glimpse of a brighter future in Terryland Park on Friday night.
Club legend ‘Jumbo’ Brennan was unable to make his magic wok in relation to the outcome of the game, but it has taken him just a couple of games in charge to stamp his approach to the beautiful game on the disillusioned side he inherited from Sean Connor, and it is an approach which was appreciated by the home fans on Friday night.
Gone was the horrendous ‘hoof-ball’ approach United fans have become accustomed to in recent seasons, as on Friday night the home side tried to string the passes together and play the game where it belongs – on the ground.
True, there were times when they overdid it, and more than once caused themselves problems when trying to play the ball out from the back when putting the boot through the ball would have been the better option. However it was refreshing to see the side trying to express itself and build a bit of confidence by retaining possession, rather than just ‘lorrying’ the ball up the pitch every time.
“It’s all about keeping possession. If you keep possession, you make the other team work hard, if you keep kicking the ball away, you give them possession and get knackered trying to chase after the ball, so you have to make the other team work.
“We didn’t go out to defend, and we won’t. My whole style of play is to go out, keep it tight and keep us in the game, I don’t want us to be 3 or 4 down at half time, I want us to be competitive, but at the same time I want us to express ourselves and keep the ball, not giving it away all the time,” Brennan said after the game.
The caretaker manager spoke with a refreshing honesty after the game, refusing to criticise a refereeing performance which many felt was substandard, and instead insisting the officials got the two major decision on the night – the dismissal of Stephen Walsh, and the awarding of a penalty to Bohs – bang on the money.
Walsh had been booked in the 11th minute for a late lunge on Liam Burns that eventually forced the Bohs centre-back to hobble off before the break, and he picked up his second yellow of the game, followed by red, in the 56th minute when preventing Bohs from taking a quick free-kick just inside their own half.
The decision incensed the United players and the home crowd, but Brennan insisted after the game that Rob Rogers was correct to dismiss the United youngster.
“It was the right decision because he [Walsh] didn’t move back. It was a schoolboy error and he has to learn from that, he’ll miss a game or two and might find it hard to get back into the side when he does return,” Brennan said.
The second big decision of the night came from the resulting free-kick, when Ger O’Brien’s set-piece into the box saw Christy Fagan get entangled with Yob Son before falling to the deck. Rogers pointed to the spot, and Fagan dusted himself down to send Conor Winn the wrong way from 12 yards.
“It was a penalty, the two players clashed in the box and, well, put it like this, if it was in their box, we’d be shouting for a penalty, so yeah, can’t have any complaints about that decision,” Brennan said.
That 60-second spell as good as settled the game which had seen Bohs take the lead after just 9 minutes, and given the form of United this season, there was no way they were going to come from two goals down, with just 10 men, against a side that still harbours title hopes, however faint they may be.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Sentinel.
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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