Archive News
Those key factors that determine your future prospects in the sport of politics
Date Published: 12-Sep-2012
Somewhere on the airwaves on Sunday night, I heard somebody saying that the atmosphere at the end of Sunday’s epic All-Ireland hurling final was anti-climactic.
That somebody, whoever they were, was as wrong as Brian Cowen was when he decided to stand down most of his Cabinet with some half-cocked notion that it might win Fianna Fáil an election.
No, it wasn’t an anti-climax – it was exhaustion. I was a mere spectator at Croke Park and I’ve never been more physically or emotionally drained by 145 or 146 minutes.
It got so bad that over the last agonising 10 minutes I couldn’t stand, I couldn’t shout, I could hardly watch as Joe Canning stood over the ball for that final fateful free. I never felt as tired in my life as I did on that Sunday evening.
In sport – and especially a whirlwind sport like hurling – all of the problems and obstacles of the wider world become concentrated into a few moments.
1. The Reality of the Situation: There was the dread feeling when you began to think, this was too good to be through, as Galway struggled to contain Kilkenny from getting the upper-hand.
2. The Hard Choices: As Henry Shefflin lined up to take the penalty, he had the choice of winning the game (or potentially losing it); or going for the percentages by nabbing an easy point, ensuring the worst Kilkenny could do was get a draw.
3. The Unknowable: The game was a great example of the impossibility of knowing everything beforehand: whether or not form or physicality or speed or game plans would pan out. All of these things could not be fully known until they were played out and even then they weren’t clear cut (Brian Hogan had a mediocre first half; a stormer of a second half). And the unknowability of who will win the replay in three weeks’ time. I have a gut feeling and an emotional attachment but do I really really know what’s going to happen? Not a chance.
And so it’s Monday afternoon and on to Westport in Mayo, Ireland’s favourite place to live and Fine Gael’s favourite place to have its annual think-in of TDs and Senators.
And as the day pans out you begin to bracket the problems in the same kind of way (though with Enda Kenny you’re never sure if he’s a Brian Cody or an Anthony Cunningham or a . . . Davy Fitzgerald!). Of course, the uncertainty is still as frustrating and infuriating but unfortunately it’s been played out at a tortuously slow pace.
The Reality of the Situation
For new governments, honeymoon periods usually last for three months, but this Coalition has emerged relatively unscathed from its first 18 months. However, with €3.5 billion in cuts to be found in December and with no easy pickings, Kenny was warning his troops yesterday that the next four months will be the most difficult in the Coalition’s five-year term of office.
Secondly, Donal Donovan, a former deputy director of the International Monetary Fund, was one of the guest speakers. According to TDs who were present, he was very pessimistic about Ireland’s prospect.
He said that without relief on bank recapitalisation, the austerity policies would not really achieve their goals and would hamper the return to growth (this is an argument that has been endlessly made, though far more robustly, by the US economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman).
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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