Archive News
Sad passings puts sporting success into perspective
Date Published: {J}
IT was a strange and mostly humbling weekend, the type of one which should always keep you guarded about getting too far ahead of yourself. Some highs and lows; major disappointment mixed with great joy; but most of all a terrible sense of sadness over the passing of two relatively young men with a strong GAA association in the parish of Clarinbridge.
Over six weeks ago, I had a phone call from Sheila Forde who was wondering would it be alright for her son Eoin to not attend that particularly night’s training session with the Galway hurlers. The family had bad news about the health of her husband Johnny confirmed and she wanted Eoin home in Clarinbridge with them.
Sheila was virtually apologising for her intervention and hoped it wouldn’t be a problem. I naturally reassured her that there had been no need whatsoever to explain in such difficult circumstances and wished her and the Forde family well. Sheila is also bravely fighting her own health battle and I felt completely humbled by our conversation. I thought to myself what a remarkable woman.
Sadly, Johnny Forde passed away last Friday morning just a short time before his neighbour, Raymond Geraghty, was also taken from this life. Both men were in their early fifties and had succumbed to cancer. Understandably, Clarinbridge has been a very sad place over these past few days and it was just last March when the parish was beside itself with joy after an historic All-Ireland Club title triumph.
I had spent four years coaching Clarinbridge in the past and would have got to know many of the people of the parish during that time. I remember well Johnny Forde’s two brothers, Val and Boaco, who were mighty supporters. Sympathising with Val on Sunday evening, he was anxious to congratulate me on the success of the Galway hurlers the previous day.
You’d feel awkward in one sense, but content in another that the victory over Cork had given the Forde and Geraghty families a little lift. We had spoken about Eoin Forde before the match and encouraged the players to remember him when the going would get tough in the Gaelic Grounds. Eoin is in the army now and it has helped him to mature. He had asked me to tell the players to “drive on” when we spoke a few hours after his dad’s passing. He meant it from the heart too.
I am not sure where this column is going, but the happenings of the weekend just illustrates once again that joy and grief are never too far away from each other. I keep thinking of Sheila Forde and that phone call. There are many people I am not fit to their lace their boots for many different reasons . . . and she is definitely one of them.
The evening before the Galway hurlers qualifier match against Cork, I was at the the Renmore GAA grounds, watching a West Board junior football league game of all things. My son Eanna was playing corner back for St. James’ against Killanin and I wanted to offer some moral support. Galway footballer and local hero Johnny Duane was also at the match and we wished each other luck in our respective championship games the following day. Johnny is a rock solid young man and was a key member of the county U-21 footballers who had swept to All-Ireland glory earlier in the year.
Travelling from Gort to Galway on our way back from Limerick on Saturday evening, those of remaining on the team coach were now glued to the radio and coverage of the footballers’ tussle with Meath in Navan. By all accounts, it wasn’t a great game but Galway’s re-arranged forces were fighting for their reputations and putting it up to the home team.
The hurlers had just had their post-match dinner in the Lady Gregory Hotel and when tuning into the footballers’ game, they were trailing by 0-8 by 0-6, but Meath were getting edgy as a string of missed chances was fuelling the anxiety of the huge home support. We were listening intently, hoping that Galway would turn it around and make it a double celebration.
For more, read this week’s Connacht 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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