Archive News
Sense of enjoyment may be key in St ThomasÕs title bid
Date Published: 13-Mar-2013
There is no more exciting a week in the life of a club hurler or footballer than the build-up to a first All-Ireland senior final at Croke Park and it is great to see that the St Thomas’s panel are embracing the prospect of taking on Kilcormac-Killoughey of Offaly on Sunday with such a relish.
Some teams retreat from the limelight when faced with the biggest date in their club careers; some give sullen, short answers; but the men of Peterswell, Kilchreest, and Castledaly are making the most of what really should be the best weekend of their lives.
Team manager John Burke has managed to bring a great sense of fun and enjoyment to the club’s senior panel this year. It was remarkable how relaxed the players were when Marty Morrissey and an RTE News crew visited the Galway champions for the Six One News this week.
Instead of engaging in bland platitudes, Burke produced the kind of fighting talk which stood his team in such good stead when they faced into the All-Ireland semi-final victory over reigning champions Loughgiel Shamrocks last month. Burke is not cocky or arrogant, but he is not afraid to talk up his side’s chances either.
St Thomas’s have a right to be confident after coming through a tough Galway championship, which included ‘derby’ wins over neighbours Gort and Loughrea, but they also showed a great sense of joy when the Burke clan – John has six sons on the panel – re-enacted the closing scene from 1970s TV show The Waltons for the news show on Tuesday evening.
One by one, the lads turned off the lights in the family house for the TV cameras; while they also pucked a ball from one house to another to show how close this band of brothers are to each other, and the likes of the Murrays and Kellys just down the road.
It’s been refreshing to see a group of players face into a big final with such a great sense of humour, without neglecting to focus on the task in hand.
Given how the championship has been dominated by the likes of Portumna, Loughrea, Athenry, and Clarinbridge, it’s been a decade and a half since a club as small as St Thomas’s, who represent barely 200 houses, were top dogs in Galway hurling.
The Sarsfields team of the 1990s was hugely popular both inside and outside the county and, given how extremely youthful Burke’s side is, the potential in this team is nothing short of frightening if they can keep this group of young players together for years to come.
David Burke, Conor Cooney, and James Regan all have the vital experience of playing in front of 82,000 people in last September’s All-Ireland finals at Croke Park with the county side, but once again the club final is bringing up some wonderful stories.
Such as the prospect of seeing wing back Enda Tannian, on the verge of his 19th season with the team, finally getting to represent St Thomas’ in the country’s biggest stadium – a man who was more used to Intermediate battles, and a few pints after a game, in his early days with the club’s adult side.
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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