McDonnell Park tops Galway Cllrs’ Honours List

Bradley Bytes – A sort of political column

It may have slipped your notice but, ladies and gentlemen, we can confirm that one of our esteemed city councillors has been elevated to the status of greatness . . . after having a field named after him.

Yup, we kid you not, usually a politician has to be dead before they bestow the ultimate honour of naming a road or a housing estate or a bridge after you.

But Declan McDonnell, a former Progressive Democrats now Independent City Councillor, is so great, they didn’t want to wait that long and so have honoured him by naming a pitch at Fahy’s Field, McDonnell Park.

He’s a living legend, if you like; or at the very least he’s as legendary as, say, an Insurance company like Aviva. 

McDonnell Park has a nice ring to it for the Chairman of Mervue United, the club who were doing the honouring.

In another nice touch, the unveiling occurred just months before the local elections so his greatness should still be fresh in the minds of the electorate when the citizens of Mervue go to the polls.

A coincidence, no doubt.

We won’t mention the war (It was stated last year at City Council level that this particular field be named after the late former mayor, Cllr Bridie O’Flaherty but for whatever reason, the formal proposal came to nothing – oops, we’ve already said too much!) but McDonnell’s honour did get us thinking about some of our other elected members.

If they were all to be considered great by the great unwashed, what might we name after them?

What next? Conneely’s Coliseum, Fine Filly Flah and Donal’s Demesne

McDonnell Park has already given ideas to city mayor Pádraig Conneely, who is eyeing up St Michael’s new GAA grounds in the Westside for a renaming in his honour – Conneely Coliseum perhaps.

But as a concession, he’d have to at least allow the proposed running track at the facility to be named after his constituency foe Collette Connolly.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Sentinel.