Archive News
Resolute Bob getting the job done
Date Published: {J}
John McIntyre is a member of the five-man Galway based Gaticoma Syndicate which has seen its red and black colours carried to victory by Rigour Back Bob on six occasions last season. He offers an unique insight into part-owning a horse which has been a model of consistency and is as tough as they come.
IT was 7am on Monday, May 3. After barely three hours sleep in the wake of Galway hurlers National League triumph over Cork in Thurles the previous evening, their team manager was driving around the streets of Galway city in vain pursuit of the Racing Post.
The fact that it was a Bank Holiday Monday hardly helped my quest for horse racing’s bible, but I was couldn’t wait to find out the experts’ view of Rigour Back Bob’s chances in the McConville Construction Hurdle at Down Royal later in the afternoon.
Already our pride and joy had done his owners, the Gaticoma Syndicate, proud over a roller-coaster 12 months which left him chasing a sixth win from 11 runs at Northern Ireland’s premier racetrack. He had first gotten off the mark in a bumper at Ballinrobe the previous May.
Bob was supposed to be ‘going out to grass’ after his Grade 3 success at the Punchestown festival less than a fortnight earlier, but trainer Edward O’Grady made contact a few days before the league final to inform the syndicate that the horse was in “rude health” and the race in Down Royal was tailor-made for him.
O’Grady, who has the best strike rate of any modern-day Irish trainer at the Cheltenham festival, has been the key component in not alone Bob’s progress but in the syndicate ending up with the horse in the first place. He bought him at the Goffs Land Rover Sales before completing a deal with the five racing renegades from the West.
My partners in crime are Michael Needham, Willie Donohue, Jim Gallagher and Johnny Carroll, four basically retired individuals who, like me, can hardly believe our good fortune in coming across such a consistent and quality horse which is as genuine as the day is long.
O’Grady hadn’t beaten around the bush in outlining the trials and tribulations of owning a racehorse, but a couple of us didn’t need much marking of our cards about those pitfalls. We knew getting the horse to the racetrack wasn’t guaranteed never mind that he might be even competitive.
It’s fair to say, however, O’Grady liked the chestnut (out of Rigorous and Bob Back) from the start, but none of us were prepared for him finishing a close up fourth behind Universal Truth on his debut appearance in a Leopardstown bumper last March 12 months. Galway were playing Cork in the league that same day and it’s the only time I have missed Bob running . . . getting the team bus to pull outside a bookies’ office in Cork so I could see the race was a bit of a surreal moment.
On the strength of that effort, Bob was one of the leading fancies for the Goffs Land Rover Bumper at the Punchestown festival and despite meeting trouble in running, he finished a gallant third before rounding off his first campaign in great style at Ballinrobe. That was some day and the syndicate celebrated as though we had won the Cheltenham Gold Cup and Epsom Derby all rolled into one.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune Galway Races Supplement
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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