Archive News
Sporting clichŽs are disastrous Ð but not nearly as much as earthquakes
Date Published: {J}
In terms of problems you’d fear would affect flights out of Galway Airport, volcanic eruptions in Iceland would hardly be top of the list. But that’s where we find ourselves in 2010 as the effects of globalisation reach further into our daily lives than we could ever have anticipated.
Of course it’s not just Galway Airport and we shouldn’t be so parochial; at least we now know that we’ll soon have direct flights to Cork which has always seen itself as an independent republic anyway and consequently we can now claim another international destination.
Equally we shouldn’t be paranoid and think that the CPSU is behind the volcanic ash because their workers at the passport office have already managed to ground around 60,000 Irish passengers by denying them their passport on foot of what might now be seen as an industrial volcano of protest over their wages.
The irony is that those who waited for passports are getting them in the post now – but they have nowhere to go with them because we can’t get any flights.
And we shouldn’t be laughing; earthquakes in China are one thing – not to denigrate them, even if they occur in a remote Tibetan trading centre that we’ve never heard of – but volcanoes that ground all flights from Carnmore are a different kettle of fish entirely.
You may not realise that more than 220,000 people have been killed worldwide so far in 2010 as a result of natural disasters. China’s was the third major earthquake recorded in just four months.
The largest of these was of course the earthquake in Haiti which killed at least 217,000, a figure estimated to top 300,000 when fully completed work to clear debris.
Two months after the tragedy, another 300,000 people are still recovering and some three million victims are trying to rebuild their lives in the poorest country of America.
And while earthquakes invariably make the news, there are other global disasters that hardly make the headlines but which have enormous impact nonetheless.
Brazil, for example its worst flooding in four decades early this month, a tragedy which killed more than 200 people in Rio de Janeiro and left thousands of Brazilians homeless.
And of course we had our own problems closer to home when hundreds of families were forced from their homes – and while that might seem insignificant in an international context, the scale of the human misery inflicted offers an insight into the suffering endured by tens of thousands across the globe.
Of course the word ‘disaster’ is hopelessly overused in a sporting context; all week it’s been labelled a ‘disaster’ that Liverpool won’t qualify for the Champions League next season.
They, of all clubs, know what a real disaster is, marking – as they did last Thursday – the 21st anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster when 96 people died at the FA Cup semi final between the Reds and Nottingham Forest.
Others have apparently suffered honeymoon disasters because their accommodation has fleas; Whitney Houston’s comeback gig in London was a disaster, and either Gordon Brown or Dave Cameron is facing political disaster over the next few weeks.
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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