Archive News
King ruled out of Mervue Utd’s home tie
Date Published: 10-May-2013
MERVUE United will look to maintain their positive start to the season when they host a resurgent Waterford United at Fahy Field this evening, Friday (7:45pm).
Having lost ground on league leaders Longford Town following a scoreless draw with local rivals Salthill Devon last weekend, Johnny Glynn’s charges will be anxious to return to winning ways against a team they have already accounted for during the current campaign.
Indeed, Mervue’s 4-0 demolition of Waterford back in March was nothing less than impressive, although it is worth noting that the South-East outfit have subsequently turned their season around and have not lost a game since.
Overall, the form guides for both sides have been good of late. Mervue have won three, drawn five and lost just the one while the visitors have won, drawn and lost three games. Those three losses, by the way, came in Waterford’s opening four games.
For Mervue, Martin Conneely (knee ligament) continues to be an absentee through injury while offensive midfielder Tom King is also out with a hamstring pull after being forced to retire from last Friday night’s derby game against Salthill Devon.
Also forced off through injury in that contest was goalkeeper Brian O’Donoghue, who sustained concussion, and, consecutively, he will miss this tie, leaving Conor Gleeson and James Healy to battle it out for the No. 1 shirt. In addition, midfielder Shane Keogh must undergo a fitness test on a back injury before this evening’s kick-off.
Understandably, Mervue boss Glynn felt the draw against basement club Salthill Devon in Drom was two points lost rather than a point won but insisted that their local rivals were an improving side.
“We totally dominated the game and created good chances, playing quite well, but we were just not able to put them away,” said Glynn. “Salthill, though, have not been conceding many goals of late and their defence is very strong, so they are hard to break down.”
The same may be expected of this evening’s visitors, who, despite that 4-0 thrashing by Mervue in the Spring, have steadied the proverbial ship, as underlined by their 1-1 draw against league leaders Longford Town last weekend.
Meanwhile, Salthill Devon, who still chase their first victory of the season after nine games, travel to Wexford Youths. Given, though, there are only four points separating second place Mervue and second from bottom Youths, it would suggest the Leinster men are better placed to secure all three points. Kick-off in Ferrycarrig Park is 8pm.
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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