Archive News
UK election is turning out to be a mighty lot of fun
Date Published: {J}
FRIDAY night in the Sportsground. It is cold and wet, but we’re thankful to be out of the house after the cold spell put a temporary halt to any kind of socialising. The driving mist whips in over the stand, coming full circle to rest on your brow, but the 2,000 hardy souls don’t care – it’s great to have a game to go to.
Montpellier are in town for the Amlin Challenge Cup, and avoiding defeat is a must for Connacht in their bid to ensure qualification for the quarter-finals of the competition.
The visitors have left their French internationals Francois Trinh-Duc and Fulgence Ouedraogo at home, but a win will see them leapfrog Connacht to take top spot, and there is a sense of nervousness in the air.
The mini rugby stars of the future who will entertain us at half-time trot down the dog track. The Gaeltacht Rugby contingent in the group, aged between seven and ten, stop and turn to face the stand and treat the crowd to a Carraroe version of the Haka.
A huge cheer goes up, which increases in volume when John Muldoon leads the men in green onto the pitch. Connacht win the toss and opt to play into the conditions in the first-half, and Montpellier park the bus in the Connacht half for the opening 40 minutes.
The visitors ruck and maul, push and probe, but all they have to show for their efforts is three measly points as Connacht’s defence is the only thing that refuses to buckle with the weather. It was not pretty, but anyone looking for a beauty contest was in the wrong place to start with.
Having weathered the storm, in every way, in the first half, Connacht come out with teeth bared for the second period. It is their turn to dominate territory, but unlike their opponents, they make it count.
The life of a back, and particularly a winger, can be a lonely one in conditions like Friday night, but Liam Bibo and Fionn Carr stay switched on mentally and are rewarded with a try apiece as Connacht crush the hopes of the French to seal top spot in the group and progress to the quarter finals.
There was a decent crowd on Friday night, but you won’t be able to swing a tackle bag for fear of knocking a ground plan out of the hands of day-trippers when one of Europe’s big guns rolls into town in April. European aristocrats Leicester, the Exiles of London Irish or Jonny Wilkinson and his Toulon team are all potential opponents in the knockout stages. The guys and gals of Gaeltacht Rugby will be busy honing their routine for the big day.
For a full report on the match see page 31 of this week’s Sentinel
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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