Archive News
St. MaryÕs boys sweep the boards
Date Published: 31-May-2012
GALWAY schools will be well represented at the All-Ireland Track and Field finals in Tullamore this weekend following some excellent performances at the Connacht Schools Athletic Association Finals in Athlone recently.
In the Senior boys events there were plenty of fine performances across the board, with Galway athletes very much to the fore. St. Enda’s proved to have the fastest young men in the province when they recorded a one-two in the Senior 100m.
Ben Cooney came home just in front of his schoolmate Ronan Dobey, and this pairing was the backbone behind the victorious 4 x 100m relay team in the final of the event of the day, just about holding off the brave challenge of HRC Mountbellew.
The 400m Hurdles event proved to be an excellent battle between two promising Galway athletes as St. Joseph’s Evan McGuire, fresh from having set the new Olympic Stadium 100m record, faced up to the reigning Irish 400m Hurdles champion Anthony Hebron from rival college St. Mary’s.
On the day McGuire just had the necessary speed to carry him across the line in first place, but it promises to be another titanic battle when they square up again in the All-Ireland final. Hebron went on to finish third in the 800m soon afterwards.
Another Galway winner on the track was Simon Callaghan from Presentation Headford, as he powered down the track to take the 110m hurdles title, while St. Mary’s recorded a victory in the 2000m Steeplechase as Paul Fahy from Claregalway was a convincing winner over last year’s champion, and fellow schoolmate, Gary O’Connell.
In the field events, Loughrea VS recorded a fine double in the Long Jump when Emmet Creaven finished marginally ahead of his teammate Janic Schultz. Creaven was also to the fore in the Triple Jump where he finished second behind former Irish sprint medallist Osaze Osagie from St. Mary’s College. The city school also scored well in the javelin with Patrick O’Connell and Paul Forde finishing second and third respectively, and these helped contribute to St.Mary’s winning the overall shield competition for best Senior School.
In the Senior girls, the outstanding Galway performer on the day was Katie O’Donoghue from Presentation Athenry. Katie recorded victories in the 100m and followed that with first place in the High Jump. Another Athenry athlete, Leticia Ryan-Collins, representing the Vocational School, was also to the fore, with a fine victory in the Triple Jump to add to her second place in the Long Jump.
Melissa Barrett from Loughrea VS was another double medal winner as she won the Discus and was second in the Javelin, while another Loughrea VS athlete Linda Porter was a convincing winner of the 800m race. Meanwhile, HRC Mountbellew struck gold in the Shot Putt when Hayley Sommers just out putted Hannah Kindregan from Pres Athenry.
The intermediate (U-17) girls competition proved to be another tough one, with a number of Galway girls featuring in the medals. The outstanding display came from Presentation Athenry’s Alanna Lally who recorded a championship best performance when winning the 800m from her teammate Sinead Gaffney, and then followed this up with victory in the 300m.
Indeed, it was a successful day for the Pres Athenry athletes as they also recorded victories in the Long Jump through Clare Ryder, the High Jump through Maria McNamara and the hammer through Emma Grady, while also recording second place finishes for Jessica Heneghan in the 200m, Eilish Whyte in the Discus, and Grady again in the Shot Putt. Victory in the relay sealed their victory in the Intermediate Best Inter Girls School Shield.
For more, read this week’s Galway City 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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