Archive News
Killimor on the brink of regaining the All-Ireland club crown
Date Published: 27-Feb-2013
Eoghan Cormican
REWIND 12 months to a bitterly cold February afternoon in Nenagh – Killimor’s hopes of a second successive All-Ireland club final appearance torn to shreds. There would be no return to Croke Park to defend their title. Put simply, a fork in the road had been reached and the question surfaced, where now for this bunch of players?
Killimor’s stickwomen had enjoyed unprecedented glory during an all-conquering two year period, securing back-to-back County titles and annexing the Bill Carroll Cup in the process – the fifth Galway club to inscribe their name on club camogie’s most coveted prize.
Then, out of the blue, they came unstuck against a Drom & Inch outfit, bringing this success story to an abrupt halt. Spring came and went and camogie enthusiasts in the East Galway village wondered if the players which had given them so many unforgettable days had the hunger to rise once more.
Killimor had long knocked at the door of champions and when they finally barged through, the success achieved was almost unimaginable. This group of players had soldiered together since the County Junior A final win of 2003, taking the Intermediate title at the first attempt a year later. Was it now time for Galway’s camogie queens to hand over the baton to a new force?
Killimor, however, proved their appetite was still as strong as ever and will look to reclaim the All-Ireland senior club title when squaring off against Milford in what promises to be a fascinating decider at Croke Park on Saturday (5pm).
Reflecting on the semi-final loss to Drom & Inch, manager Tommy Callagy says the defeat had a massive impact on his troops. “It was a game I think we half expected to win, but after the loss something changed. By god there is a different attitude this year from the girls and there’s been no standing back at all.”
With no injury concerns to report, Callagy asserts that competition for a starting berth is fierce: “Everyone is flying fit and rearing to go, no one is guaranteed a place for Saturday which is the right way to have it.”
Unlike previous campaigns, Killimor were rarely troubled in easing to a third consecutive county championship. Old nemesis Mullagh were cast aside in the semi-final, a real confidence injecting win and that was no more underlined when they played with fantastic style to put Sarsfields to the sword in last November’s county final.
Midfielders Emer Haverty and Ann Marie Starr delivered tour de force performances in that final, while corner-forward Susan Keane struck for 1-3 in their 2-12 to 1-4 win. Claire and Martina Conroy were also prominent in attack shooting 1-7 between them.
Ulster champions O’Donovan Rossa provided the opposition in the All-Ireland semi, a game Killimor were expected to see out with minimum fuss. The underdogs from Antrim, however, completely ripped up the formbook and Killimor were forced to exhaust their full arsenal of energy and effort to scrape through.
To some degree, that narrow victory may prove a blessing in disguise for Killimor – not only bringing them back down to earth after the ease in which they achieved the three-in-a-row of county titles but hammering home that a second All-Ireland title won’t be handed to them on a silver platter.
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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