Archive News
Sprinter Hession peaking at right time for London
Date Published: 25-Jul-2012
CIARAN TIERNEY
THE fastest Irishman in history over 200 metres, Athenry native Paul Hession, has put his medical studies at NUI Galway on hold over the past six years in order to focus completely on full-time athletics as he looks forward to his second Olympic Games.
Hession narrowly missed out on a place in the 200m final at Beijing four years ago, after a decent performance in the semi-final, and only missed out on a place at the Athens Olympics in 2004 by two-hundredths of a second.
The 29-year old achieved the qualifying time for London at the Irish Championships in August of last year, running 200m in 20.51 seconds at Santry. That run has given the Athenry AC man plenty of time to finalise his preparations for an event in which he could yet rub shoulders with Jamaican superstar Usain Bolt.
Realistically, Hession is not going to win the 200m final, but he should be strong enough to make the semi-finals and it would be a dream come true for the Athenry man to surpass his achievement in Beijing, by making it to the final.
After being based in Fife, Scotland, for the best part of six years, where he trained under Stuart Hogg, Hession relocated to Dublin last winter and has been with coach John Coghlan since the turn of the year.
He struggled to achieve peak form in the early part of this year, but has shown a steady improvement in recent weeks with victory over Jason Smyth in the 100m final at the national championships at Santry last month in a time of 10.37 seconds.
Hession was not particularly impressive at the European Championships in Helsinki, but looked to be coming into good form at just the right time when he clocked 20.54 at Lucerne, Switzerland, on Tuesday, July 17, last. He set the Irish record of 20.30 in 2007.
All of his focus right now is on the 200m heats on Tuesday week, August 7. He has delayed making the short flight to London until next Thursday, August 2, as he believes that the hype surrounding the Opening Ceremony can be something of a distraction.
“I am hoping to make the semi-final, like I did in Beijing. Beyond that we will see. Making the final won’t be easy. Everything would have to go perfectly for me, but it’s not impossible,” he told Tribune Sport this week.
“As in Beijing, I’m expecting the semi-final to be my Olympic final. I would have to have a bit of luck on the draw. If I got a decent draw, I could make it. My aim is to get to the semi-final and then to give it a real shot. A bit of luck comes into it at that stage. Things are coming together really well for me at this stage and I have learned from past seasons.”
Experience helps, and he was hugely encouraged by his run in Lucerne – his fastest time this year. It proved he was on track to peak for London, after a sluggish start to the year which may have been down to the change of location and trainer.
For more, read this week’s Connnacht 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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