Archive News
Monivea men miss out on AIL qualification again
Date Published: {J}
Rob Murphy
MONIVEA have missed out on the All Ireland League for another year after they were beaten resoundingly 33-7 by Seapoint at the Castle Grounds on Saturday in a game where only a bonus point win would have kept alive their hopes.
Losing twice in a week on home soil by big margins will lead many to surmise that they were a long way short of what was required, but it doesn’t begin to paint the full picture.
For starters the bonus point victory over Richmond in round one shows their credentials. That game had originally being scheduled for round two, but changes were made to the fixture list to accomodate City of Derry who had come through a manic run of games to take the Ulster title on the previous Monday evening in a play off with Armagh.
The Ulster champions have huge resources and were favourites for promotion but a plucky Seapoint toppled them up north in round one to put them on the back foot. They then came down to Galway fully focused on staying alive in the competition with no hope of complacency the following Saturday.
Monivea needed them to be a little switched off, that didn’t happen and the 33-18 scoreline says it all. That all left the Connacht champions needing a bonus point win against unbeaten Seapoint without key front row players Cathal Divilly and Fergus Farrell among others and desperately seeking momentum. The Dublin side had all the energy.
All that is not to say that Monivea should have gone up. No question about it, they were beaten by two better sides (City of Derry qualified for a play off, Seapoint won promotion) but it does explain why such heavy defeats were inflicted. Had the sides met in round one, Monivea would have mounted a much stronger challenge.
So where to now? Much like Seapoint, Monivea have withstood the urge to look beyond the catchment area for solutions and judging by the influx of talent on the horizon from a promising under 19s league winning side, they don’t need to deviate from that.
Time and again they have fought back from disappointment. Next year the challenge from Sligo in Connacht could be a little stronger as well, but another big push in the All Ireland Junior Cup should be a priority too as it gives them valuable game time outside the provinces.
Kevin Higgins got their try on Saturday to put them 7-6 ahead after 30 minutes but a Brian Keegan penalty and Stephen Verso’s try after some poor defending turned the game on its head before the the break. The challenge sparked again after half time but nothing came from it and a superbly well drilled Seapoint cut loose.
Monivea’s plight merely highlights once again the desperate need for a restructure of the Connacht Junior leagues. The power here lies with the clubs and some fresh thinking is needed. A 12 team top division is too big and doesn’t foster good competition, an eight team home and away format is a must if the club game is to move forward at that level.
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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