Archive News
Odds against them but Connacht set for massive effort
Date Published: 10-Jan-2013
Dara Bradley
BY most people’s reckoning Connacht’s slim hopes of progressing further in Europe this season will be well and truly extinguished this weekend when they take on the English champions, Harlequins, in London on Saturday (1.35pm).
On the eve of the penultimate pool round of the Heineken Cup, head coach Eric Elwood says he hasn’t even thought about the mathematics and different permutations and scenarios that need to happen for his side to either A) qualify for the quarter-finals as one of the two best runners-up of the six pools or B) finish as one of the third, fourth or fifth best runners-up to qualify for the Amlin Challenge Cup.
Both of those outcomes are still technically achievable but are fairly remote possibilities. So remote, in fact, that it’s no wonder Elwood hasn’t dusted off the abacus.
But nobody needs a calculator to know that unless the Westerners secure victory at the Stoop on Saturday, then it is curtains, and Zebre at the Sportsground the following week will be irrelevant.
In reality, the visitors are playing for pride and for their reputations and for the coach, who will step aside at the end of this season.
Given that Conor O’Shea’s Harlequins, with four or five English internationals, are high on confidence, unbeaten in Europe, top of pool 3 of the Heineken Cup, as well as top of the English Premiership having won 10 of their 13 domestic encounters so far this season, it’s easy to see why the bookies have installed them as overwhelming favourites.
One of the equally pleasuring and frustrating things about following Connacht Rugby is how every season they can rise to the challenge and ‘up their game’ when facing superior opposition in certain matches when the odds are stacked against them.
The flip side of that is Connacht are prone to falling flat and underachieving against sides that they should be beating handily and are expected to beat.
To claim another scalp and make more magic moments Connacht will have to play better than they have done all season, and for the entire 80 minutes.
In this fixture last season, Connacht were desperately unlucky to leave Twickenham without even a losing bonus point, the minimum they deserved from a barnstorming debut in the Heineken Cup.
They heroically won the return leg with 9-8 after a logic-defying defensive effort that has been elevated to legendary status; and this season, at the Sportsground, Connacht could have beaten ‘Quins, and would have, but for two lapses in concentration and mistakes that gifted the visitors the game.
Connacht had led by 10 points, 19-9, after a half hour at College Road in October, but two preventable tries just before the break swung momentum back in favour of the Londoners and they marched on, again agonisingly denying Connacht a losing bonus with an eight points winning margin.
When you look at the head-to-head record between the teams, the bookies 19-points handicap is perhaps a bit generous. Connacht on their day aren’t that far off Harlequins and Elwood has identified a game-plan that he believes can beat them: Play ‘keep-ball’.
Elwood reckons that if Connacht can keep the ball and not kick it away, deprive Harlequins of possession, and attack with confidence, speed and flair like they have attempted to do all season, then they have a chance of causing an upset. “The key for us, like we did out here in the Sportsground, we want to go out and play ball, we want to play positive rugby,” he says.
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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