Archive News
Late goals save Bearna’s bacon after recovering from slow start
Date Published: {J}
Bearna 2-10
Naomh Anna, Leitir Mór 0-11
Alan Dooley
LAST year’s beaten semi-finalists Bearna had to dig deep to earn a place in the last sixteen of the senior football championship and, more importantly, secure their senior status after a compelling battle with Naomh Anna, Leitir Mór which swung in the victors’ favour thanks to late goals from Ray Conneely and Kieran Hanley.
The five-point margin of defeat was undoubtedly harsh on a Leitir Mór side who started in whirlwind fashion and were ahead for 50 minutes of the contest until Conneely slotted home from close range to give Bearna a lead they would not relinquish. Hanley added the coup de grace deep into stoppage time.
Having wasted a mountain of possession in their opening round defeat by Moycullen, Bearna looked to be suffering a hangover from that loss in the opening quarter as Leitir Mór carved them apart to lead by five after only seven minutes of play. Playing into a stiff breeze, the omens were far from encouraging for Michael Lydon’s men but they showed admirable character to claw their way back into the contest by the interval.
Ray Conneely was the attacking fulcrum around which all their best moves revolved and although, like the majority of his team mates, he got off to a slow start, when the crucial scores were needed the full forward rose to the challenge and ended as the game’s top scorer with 1-3 from play.
Early on, though, Leitir Mór’s Patrick Mark Ó Fátharta looked as if he would be the most influential forward on show as he led the Bearna defence a merry dance and kicked two points, the first a wonderfully dispatched free from long distance in the opening minute. Ferdia Breathnach, Pádraig Bairéad, and Ciarán Ó Conghaile were also on target for the fired up Connemara men.
Unfortunately, in a manner similar to their defeat to Milltown, an inability to maintain that level of performance throughout the contest proved costly, as Bearna steadily got a stranglehold of the midfield sector and began to cut off the supply chain to the full forward line. Patrick Mark Ó Fátharta kicked another free after Ferdia Breathnach was impeded to restore the five point lead after Conneely’s riposte before striking a post with a ’45 shortly after.
Bearna were by now working the ball forward with increasing frequency and were denied a goal on 21 minutes when Paddy Kennedy got in behind the cover but saw his well struck shot expertly saved by Eoin Ó Conghaile. From the resultant ’45 though, the ball was worked into a position for the impressive Donal Feeney to point with his left peg.
Five minutes later Bearna added arguably the score of the game with a length of the field passing move that mixed patience with precision and ended with Kennedy splitting the posts to reduce the deficit to three. DD Flaherty then added his first of the game from a free before Kieran Hanley, from very close range, somehow contrived to drive an effort for a point wide when a goal seemed inevitable.
Leitir Mór ended the half on a positive note as Cormac Ó Confhaola set up Aonghus Ó Fátharta for a good score to make it 0-7 to 0-4 and another brisk start to a half saw them add two quick points from Ciarán Ó Conghaile and Cormac Ó Confhaola. Three wides in the same spell, however, meant their lead was not as healthy as it could have been.
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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