Archive News
Plotting the hurling downfall of his native county
Date Published: {J}
IF you asked former Athenry hurler Brian Hanley, three months ago, where did he think he would be on Saturday, June 4, he would more than likely have looked at the GAA calendar and pondered, perhaps, attending Galway hurlers’ Leinster quarter-final tie against either Carlow or Westmeath.
He would never have imagined, though, that he would be leading Westmeath out against the Tribesmen, having been appointed manager of the Lake County just a couple of months ago. Still, by nature, Hanley has always liked to be up close and personal to the action . . . he would gladly swap the comfort of the stand for the cut and thrust of the battlefield any day.
In late spring, Hanley took over as Westmeath boss from former Offaly great Kevin Martin following a disastrous National League Division 2 campaign in which Westmeath failed to record a single league point. “They have been down in their boots this year, partly, I can gather, due to what had transpired between the previous management and players,” says Hanley.
“So, they were at a low ebb and it was a good challenge for me to try and get them back up again. They gave me one ultimatum – one goal – and that was to beat Carlow (in their Leinster championship opener) and take them wherever we could after that. We have done that and now we are ready for the next round.”
Indeed, that 4-10 to 1-14 victory over favourites Carlow has, in many respects, restored some of the pride back into Westmeath hurling. However, the former All-Ireland club winning Athenry midfielder has now the unenviable task of cajoling a competitive display out of the reigning Christy Ring Cup holders when they face his native county at Cusack Park, Mullingar on Saturday evening (7pm).
“I didn’t realise it at the time that Westmeath could be in line to play Galway,” says Hanley. “We have to raise the bar now because, in my opinion, they (Westmeath) are only where they should be. Now, they have to drive on and put in a good performance against Galway and let the result take care of itself.
“Leinster hurling needs Westmeath to play well. Galway hurling needs Westmeath to play well. It is no good for Galway going up to Mullingar and the game being a waste of time. It is no good for me either, to have a team that it is not competitive. I am very, very competitive by nature, so I will be asking them (Westmeath) to go out there expecting to give the performance of their lives. If that takes them over the line, fair enough. If it takes thema within ‘X’ amount of points of Galway, so be it. That is the prize of it.”
No doubt, since Hanley – who is also the current Liam Mellows manager – has taken charge of Westmeath two and a half months ago, he has revitalised the set-up. “Believe it or not, we didn’t train for three weeks when we were starting out again after the Down [National League] game, because their local football and hurling championships were on.
“I told them, you can’t burn them out and they got to respect that decision. So, when I went looking for the players, I got them. I gave them a schedule of dates, venues and times and when I went training, I knew I had 24 to 30 players. We had nine proper training sessions with full squads, and we had three matches with full panels, bar, maybe, the challenge game against Athenry. That, though, set the tone for the championship.”
Hanley’s structured approach has certainly worked, underlined by their Leinster championship victory over a Carlow outfit that continually looks to break new boundaries. “The big thing I did was put a system in place – the same as I did with Liam Mellows this year – in adopting a style and system of play. It is all about trying to get players into positions where you know they can do a job for you. Your best 15 isn’t always necessarily your best 15 hurlers. That is the bottom line.
“So, for us to progress against Galway, we have got to have our own plan and hope that it works. We may even have to stick to it when it is not [working]. We have to be competitive from the first to the last ball, regardless. For the good of the Liam McCarthy championship, we don’t want one-sided games in hurling. And we don’t want to be slated for our performance.”
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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