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O’Halloran determined for Connacht

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Date Published: 29-Jun-2012

 NEWLY elected President of the Connacht Rugby Branch, Aidan O’Halloran says it is “phenomenal” how much the professional game in the province has grown in recent years and he believes the province may now be ready to take the next step in its development by becoming a greater force in international club rugby.

On a beautiful morning in Foyle’s Hotel, Clifden, O’Halloran – a former member of Offaly’s legendary All-Ireland winning Gaelic football squad of 1982 – takes time out from his heady detail as manager of the local Bank of Ireland branch to chat about his new role in Connacht rugby.

It’s evident from the off that O’Halloran, father of Connacht winger Tiernan, has a great zest for life – something that became apparent from his own early sporting days. In his youth, he won a coveted Hogan Cup with Carmelite College, Moate – defeating St Jarlath’s College in the 1976 All-Ireland decider – before lifting the Sam Maguire Cup following that iconic moment in 1982 when a late goal from Offaly’s Seamus Darby ended Kerry’s five-in-a-row ambitions.

No surprise, then, that O’Halloran talks fondly of those days – days when he also took to the rugby fields of Leinster where he saw Towns Cup action with Athlone (late 1970s), Tullamore (early to mid ‘80s) and Portlaoise (late ‘80s) before he returned to Tullamore again in the early ‘90s.

Invariably, it was the bank job that conjured up this nomadic existence when it came to his club rugby. In the mid ‘90s, he was on the road again, this time his appointment as assistant manager to the bank in Ballygar, leading him to Creggs RFC in 1996.

“I played for Creggs for the two years they were in the All-Ireland League; it (bank appointment) just happened to coincide with those two years Creggs were in Division 4 of the AIL,” says O’Halloran.

“Unfortunately, their stay in the AIL didn’t last beyond the two years. It was always going to be hard for them with a very small pool of players really and probably an ageing team at that stage, with the likes of Ger and Kieran Dowd, Kevin O’Rourke and Barry Kilcommins.”

During this time, O’Halloran would line out with Creggs on the Saturday and, as he had dual status, with Dunmore on the Sunday.

“I had two years with those clubs and then I was appointed as bank manager in Clifden in 1999, so I moved down here then. The natural progression was to join up with Connemara RFC at that stage.”

Then 40 years of age, the father of three decided it was time to bring the curtain down on his playing career and instead began to turn his hand to both coaching and administrative matters with the Connemara All-Blacks, getting involved with both the U-20s and seniors.

“I suppose our biggest success at senior level (with Connemara) would have been the first year we qualified for the All-Ireland League (Division 3), which was the 2001/’02 season. We had finished fourth in the League, proper, but, at that time, there were semifinals and finals. So, we beat Greystones in the semi-final and we beat Trinity in the Old Lansdowne Road in the final.

“That was a huge event for this area, for a small club in Connemara to be playing in Lansdowne Road. Trinity would also have been a very prominent and strong team at that time and, obviously, so would have been Greystones.

It is great to think, though, that we have managed to maintain our status in the league since then.”

For more see this week’s Tribune

Galway in Days Gone By

The way we were – Protecting archives of our past

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A photo of Galway city centre from the county council's archives

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

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Galway have lot to ponder in poor show

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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.

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Real Galway flavour to intermediate club hurling battle in Birr

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Date Published: 23-Jan-2013

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