Archive News
Moycullen still seeking first victory
Date Published: 20-Nov-2009
MOYCULLEN basketballers went into their Cup clash with Hoops with genuine aspirations for a first win of the season. Up until the previous weekend, Hoops, like Moycullen, had lost all their games.
But the return of Joey Haastrup and Eoin Chubb from injury and the addition of Jason Goldrick had turned things around for them in Cork against double winners from last season, Blue Demons and they came to Galway brimful of confidence on the back of an impressive victory.
In a thrilling contest, in front of another bumper crowd, Moycullen showed tremendous spirit to lead by seven going into the fourth quarter but Hoops finally found some backup from the outside for their ‘man mountain close to the hoop, 6’ 9’’, 350lb Carlton Aaron and four three pointers helped them to an 81-73 victory.
The bare statistics will show another defeat for Moycullen but there was a lot to take from the contest and they will feel they are slowly edging towards a first victory in the Superleague.
UCD/Marian from Dublin provide the next opposition on Saturday at 6pm in the Kingfisher NUIG.
The match began with Moycullen opening with six points from John Cunningham and a three from Cian Nihill. This was matched by nine points from Carlton Aaron and it was immediately apparent that it was going to be a long night for the Moycullen defence attempting to deal with him.
With his size and good hands, Hoops had the luxury of being able to throw any sort of pass in his direction which he could control before clearing space for an easy finish around the hoop. Moycullen’s policy of fronting him and double teaming on release of the pass was sound in principal but almost totally ineffective in practice as Aaron contributed 15 of Hoops’ 17 first quarter points.
However, Moycullen were able to exploit Aaron’s lack of mobility by pushing the pace and further threes from Nihill and the impressive Dylan Cunningham along with a pair of Nate Fritsch baskets saw the home team edge ahead after the first quarter, 19-17.
The second quarter followed a similar pattern to the first. Aaron was unstoppable for the visitors inside while Moycullen spread their scoring well to match the Hoops output. Threes from Mike Dowd and Fritsch pushed the hosts ahead but Phil Taylor responded for Hoops as the contest ebbed and flowed.
Nihill and Fritsch shared the offensive load for Moycullen while late Joey Haastrup and Taylor scores brought the visitors “non-
Aaron” score total to nine points. The quarter ended with the contest tied at 35-35.
The third quarter has been a real problem for Moycullen all season but this time they came out determined to reverse the trend. Keeping the pace of the game up, they made Aaron work up and down the court and this appeared to work to some degree as, for the first time in the game, he began to show tiredness.
Successive threes from Nihill, Dowd and Fritsch saw Moycullen open a five point lead as their offense flowed smoothly. With Aaron looking tired, Hoops hung in through baskets from Goldrick, Haastrup, Vujanic and Eoin Chubb but Moycullen were on their best run of the game and Dylan Cunningham, James Loughnane, Puff Summers and Fritsch all scored to stretch the lead to seven, 61-54 as the quarter ended.
An early Dowd three stretched the lead to 10 early in the fourth before Aaron went to work again. He narrowed the gap to six points with a lay-up and a pair of free throws. Up to this point, Moycullen had done a superb job in limiting Hoops to just a single three pointer. However, suddenly, Hoops found some holes as Joey Haastrup connected on a pair of threes to level the game at 64 each.
Dylan Cunningham scored for Moycullen only for Aaron to hit a pair of scores and give his team the lead. A John Cunningham layup off a super Fritsch assist levelled the scores again as the clock ran down to the last three minutes.
Aaron and Nihill then swapped baskets before Haastrup hit his third three of the quarter. When Moycullen turned the ball over on the next possession, Phil Taylor went down the other end and nailed a super three over good Moycullen defence.
The game was now up. Moycullen fouled to stop the clock but it was too late. The visitors advanced to the next round of the cup while the hosts will reflect on a game that could (and arguably should) have been won.
Coach Enda Byrt will look at this as a game that slipped away. Faced with the task of limiting Aaron and Taylor, despite the massive return from Aaron, he will feel that the team did a job that put them in a position to win, but Moycullen failed to close it out.
Credit must go to Hoops and Joey Haastrup in particular as they knocked down the key three pointers in the fourth which anyone watching the previous three quarters would have found difficult to predict. However, Moycullen will be disappointed that, from a winning position, they lost concentration and confidence and allowed the chink of light that Hoops needed.
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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