Archive News
Responsibility on Galway players to perform Ð Helebert
Date Published: {J}
STEPHEN GLENNON
FORMER All-Star and U-21 hurling selector Tom Helebert believes every Galway player who is handed a county jersey for the Tribesmen’s All-Ireland semi-final clash against Munster champions Limerick at Semple Stadium this weekend has “a responsibility to perform.”
Helebert, who earlier this year was to the fore in guiding Clarinbridge to an All-Ireland club title, is not one to stand on ceremony and the no-nonsense approach that served him so well as a player, he has now carried through into management.
“Every player who has the good fortune of pulling a jersey on for Galway, at any grade, must understand that they are considered the best player in the position at that point in time and there is a responsibility on them to perform,” states the Ballinderreen native.
“Now, you cannot let that responsibility choke you, you have to go and express yourself and bring the talent out on the pitch. Our job, as management, is to make sure the players have sufficient confidence in themselves and believe in what we are trying to achieve. You need to bring that positivity.
“Of course, it is very easy to focus on what goes wrong but it is important – even more important – to focus on the positives. What goes wrong cannot define you. After all, what makes you successful is what you do well and what you do right. That is the message we have been giving the lads. Don’t get hung up on making a mistake. Get hung up on trying to do the right thing as often as possible.”
That said, with no competitive game to date – unlike Limerick, who have come through a testing Munster championship – it leaves very little margin for error for the management when selecting their best possible starting XV.
“That is a very good point,” concedes Helebert, “but preparation is defined by the way the draw is made. All you can do in both your training environment and in the challenge and trial games you play is try to replicate everything that is ahead of you in the championship campaign.
“So, you pick your challenges carefully and we have been quite selective in the way we have gone about that. You try to play teams who you know will give you the right test and at different stages. Naturally, you are always wondering what will happen on the day, but modern management is planning for everything. You have to plan for every eventuality and hopefully we have done that.
“We have seen Limerick. We know what level they play at. We know the intensity they play at. They will have the benefit of a couple of games in which they have tested themselves. Like I said earlier, we have picked a panel and from that we are picking what we think are the best equipped 15 guys right now to represent the panel. They have the responsibility now to go and perform. That’s how we would have addressed them. It is now about performing, doing what we know they are able to do.”
In many respects, that will mean, perhaps, not fielding the best 15 hurlers but lining out a team that can fulfil the essential requirements and criteria for this game. “Correct,” states the former Galway defender and 1996 All-Star. “The way the modern game is evolving you are trying to load yourself with the best possible methodically to win the game.
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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