Archive News
In-form Corofin have the scope to sink champions
Date Published: {J}
FRANK FARRAGHER
WHEN two clubs, heavily laden with both ambition and recent success meet, then something has to give. A lot of pride and a year’s hard work will be on the line at Kiltoom on Sunday (2pm), when Corofin and St. Brigid’s battle it out for the Connacht club title.
Corofin and St. Brigid’s are very much ‘the big two’ in Connacht club football over recent years, with four provincial titles shared equally between them since 2006, while the Roscommon champions made it all the way to last year’s All-Ireland final before giving way to the power of Crossmaglen.
Indeed over recent seasons, St. Brigid’s seem to have the hex on Galway teams in the club championship, scoring last gasp goals against Killererin last year in Tuam Stadium, and also in 2006 at Hyde Park when Corofin just fell at the post in equally dramatic fashion.
Both teams to have one common thread running through their psyche – they are very difficult to beat, even when things aren’t really running their way.
St. Brigid’s struggled for periods of their Roscommon county final success over Elphin and made a terrible start in their Connacht semi-final against Sligo’s Tourlestrane and yet up ended up winning both games quite comfortably.
Corofin, could have – and probably should have – exited from the Galway championship in early round matches against Barna and Claregalway, but once they survived those close scrapes, they fairly took off in the latter part of the series.
By the time they had Tuam Stars beaten in the county final, most observers of the game in Galway accepted that they were the best side in the county, by a good stretch.
Corofin set high standards for themselves
, and deep down in the spiritual core of the club, lies a deep seated desire to emulate the achievements of the ’98 All-Ireland winning side, the first Galway club to lift the Andy Merrigan cup.
Since then, they have won four more Connacht club titles but haven’t managed to pass the All-Ireland semi-final stage, so Sunday’s Connacht final clash will be an important stepping stone along the way to fulfilling that ambition.
Manager Brian Silke, who has ran a tight ship all season in terms of focus and discipline, will of course look no further than 2pm on Sunday next, but at least he has a full hand to pick from. A good complaint, yes, but given the depth of quality in the Corofin panel, his selection will always give rise to plenty of local debate.
“I suppose the good news from a management point of view this week is that we are picking from a full panel and we really do have a lot of players striving to make that first fifteen.
“There is a lot of competition for places, and at the end of the day, everyone won’t be happy, but we just have to focus in on a complete team and squad effort for Sunday.
“St. Brigid’s are the current Connacht club champions . . . they went to last year’s All-Ireland final and with a bit of luck could have won it . . . and they are playing in their own backyard, so we are going to face one mighty challenge. We really have to perform at one hundred per cent, right from the opening minute to win this one,” said Silke.
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
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