Archive News
Multi-talented Connemara girl on top of handball world
Date Published: 01-Nov-2012
GET used to the name of Ciana Ní Churraoin – let it drift beyond the eardrum – for one suspects you will be hearing it a great deal in the years and, possibly, decades to come. For already a five-time World champion, the 16-year-old Inverin girl is quickly becoming to handball what Katie Taylor is to boxing.
Indeed, should handball be introduced into the next Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, which is a real possibility, then it could be Ní Churraoin who could be vying for the headlines with Taylor . . . that is if both remain on top of their game. A lot can happen in four years.
In any event, Ní Churraoin is progressing nicely, having come back from the World Championships at CityWest recently with three gold medals – and a silver – to add to the two gold and the silver she had won as a 13-year-old at the Worlds in Portland, Oregon in 2009.
No wonder then, the Micheal Breathnach player comes across as a confident young woman – not cocky or arrogant – but comfortable in her burgeoning status on the national and world stage. She is a young lady who knows what she wants and, quite often, she will fight tooth and nail to achieve it.
Take those World Championship medals that she won in 2009. Too young to qualify for the Irish team to compete, a 13-year-old Ní Churraoin travelled with a small contingent from the locality to the games anyway, and took home titles in the U-13 40×20 and one-wall. In Ciana’s world, nothing is impossible.
By the end of the year, she was wearing an Irish jersey and since then she has continued to dominate the underage game to an extent that many people believe if she were to go senior – right here, right now – she would not be far away from claiming a national title. She’s that good.
Perhaps, you could argue that a statement such as this just puts pressure on a girl that just turned 16 years old in September but, at first meeting, Ní Churraoin appears to be one cool customer while in her mother and travelling companion Frances, she has a solid support system.
As they say in the West, though, Ní Churraoin comes from good stock. Her father Brian – a Galway Sports Star award winner in 1981 – was a renowned boxer and when the youngster, herself, collected her Award for handball last year, they became the first father-daughter recipients of the prestigious accolades.
Indeed, it came close to being a treble as her brother Fiontáin was also in the running for a Sports Star in 2011 after the towering midfielder helped Galway’s U-21 Gaelic footballers to All-Ireland success. He, too, is also a former All-Ireland handball winner.
“I just saw Fiontáin playing handball with some of his friends and I wanted to play it as well,” says Ní Churraoin, as she recounts her early days in the sport. “I played Cumann na mBunscol U-11s and I also competed in the County Championships at U-14 that year.
“I later won the Connacht U-14 title – defeating Lauren O’Riordan (Roscommon) – but then in the All-Ireland semi-final I was beaten well by Martina McMahon, who I beat in the recent World [U-17 40×20] final. She thrashed me that day.”
Despite the early set-back, Ní Churraoin was hooked and in the ensuing years her age began to catch up with the relevant grades. “I used to go training every day before [national] school and go every day after school. Since I started secondary school (Coláiste na Coiribe), it has been harder because I have to go into Town and I have to wake up early anyway.
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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