Archive News
Salthill Devon set to join the Big Time
Date Published: 13-Nov-2009
GALWAY looks set to host three League of Ireland clubs in the 2010 season – giving it the same level of representation as the province of Munster – after Salthill Devon this week accepted an invitation from the FAI to apply for a licence to play in the First Division next season.
The invitation was sent after Devon were deemed to have won promotion from the Newstalk A Championship when Kildare County was unable to play in a two-leg promotion/ relegation play-off with the Galway club this week.
The FAI issued a short statement on the matter on Monday night which stated that “Kildare County FC today informed the Football Association of Ireland that the club is not in a position to fulfil the relegation/promotion play-off matches, originally scheduled for Tuesday and Friday of this week.
“As a result of today’s decision, Salthill Devon will have been deemed to have won promotion from the Newstalk A Championship into the League of Ireland First Division, pending the licensing process,” the statement read.
That opens the way for Devon to join Galway United (Premier Division) and Mervue United (First Division) in the League of Ireland next season, and yesterday club chairman Tony Johnstone confirmed to City Sport that the club had entered into the licensing process.
“We would be in that process anyway because, as a minimum, we would be applying for membership of the A championship again next season. The licence for the First Division is a bigger process, but we have started down that path.
“We are taking things step-by-step, and reviewing every stage of the process to evaluate what would be required and what would the benefits be, and at the end of the whole process we’ll sit down, take a look at things and make a decision.
“We want to play at the highest level possible, and it would be great to have that as something for all the younger members of the club to aspire to, but we are taking it very slowly, we’re not going to rush anything, and want to establish everything as a fact before we make a decision,” he said.
The players and management of the club’s A Championship squad are to meet tonight to discuss Devon’s potential membership of the League and discuss what level of commitment would be required, and what they would be able to provide.
Johnston says he does not envisage any difficulty from the playing point of view, but says it is just one aspect of the licensing process that the club needs to meet. Another is the infrastructure required.
“Our desire would be to play games at our own ground, and this season we hosted the A Championship final and the FAI Cup clash with UCD, and they were both successful from an organisational point of view.
“We are a private ground with one main access point so I don’t see a difficulty there, but there could be other matters which we are not aware of until a delegation from the Licensing Department of the FAI comes down, examines the ground, and advises us on what is required,” he said.
He said no approach has of yet being made to the Galway & District league, which owns Terryland Park, with a view to renting the ground for games next season, as both Galway United and Mervue United do, but a spokesperson for the FAI yesterday hinted that it would be difficult from its point of view in accommodating three League of Ireland teams playing in the one ground.
When asked if it would be possible to manipulate the fixtures list to ensure there was at least one of the three Galway clubs away from home every week, the spokesperson said that “it would probably be difficult to arrange that from a fixtures point of view”.
The spokesperson added that no ground issue “has been flagged” to the FAI, but stressed that the licensing process was a lengthy and detailed one, and said more would be known when the Licensing delegation visited Salthill Devon’s grounds in Drom.
The Galway & District League, which owns Terryland Park, is in talks with Galway United regarding the use of the ground next season, and is also due to sit down with officials from Mervue United to discuss their rental of the ground in 2010 as well.
Tony Samuels, the Chairman of the G&DL, said Galway United’s use of the ground is agreed upon on a year-on-year basis, and he has already held talks with CEO of the Premier Division club, Nick Leeson. He expects to enter into talks with officials from Mervue United in the coming days, but says there has, as of yet, been no contact from Salthill Devon.
Terryland Park has already hosted 88 games this year, including 23 games involving Galway United and 17 Mervue United games. The ground also hosted the FAI Schools Senior Cup final between St Joseph’s College (the Bish) and CBS Sexton Street Limerick in May, and the FAI Umbro Women’s U-14 Cup Final between Colga FC and Longford Town in August, as well as a range of games under the auspices of the G&DL.
There have been persistent rumours circulating for a number of weeks that Mervue United would not be applying to play in the League of Ireland again next season, but the club’s Facilities Manager and Club Licensing Officer, Declan McDonnell, firmly quashed such suggestions yesterday.
“The board of Mervue United voted to apply for a licence to play in the First Division next season, as did all 19 members of the club’s Football Committee, and our licence application has been completed and was lodged with the FAI at the end of October.
“It was a successful season for is in so far as we survived, our aspiration is to give young lads in the area the chance to play at the highest level so we have applied to play in the league in 2010. We will be restructuring our budget, and work on that is underway, but we have applied for a licence and are aiming to play in the First Division again next season,” he said.
The fact the club lost money on its debut season in the League of Ireland is no surprise, despite the fact the club operates on an amateur basis, as costs such as transport, catering, costs associated with match nights (including the rental of Terryland Park), as well as the membership fee of the League itself – believed to be around €7,000 – all add up as a drain on finances.
McDonnell also confirmed that permission would once again be sought from the G&DL for the use of Terryland Park next season as its own ground of Fahy’s Field does not meet the FAI’s licensing requirements.
A planning application to erect a fence around the pitch in Mervue has been lodged with Galway City Council, as well as the construction of a covered stand, and the granting of planning permission for both would suffice to meet that aspect of licensing requirements.
The FAI is currently undertaking a review of the entire League of Ireland structure, which is expected to be completed at the end of the 2010 season, and it is believed Mervue United will delay any work on erecting a surrounding fence or a stand at Fahy’s Field pending the outcome of that review.
It is thought that one avenue the FAI is considering is the expansion of the Premier Division to a 16-team league and the scrapping of the First Division, to be replaced by regional development leagues from which there will be promotion to, and relegation from, the Premier Division.
It is believed Mervue United will see little point in proceeding with such development work at Fahy’s Field if it is not involved in the Premier Division and if membership of the regional league does not require such facilities to be in place.
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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