Unique city hockey side is skating around the place

Talking Sport with Stephen Glennon

AGalway inline hockey club, which recently won an international tournament in Armagh, is desperately looking for an indoor facility where they can train midweek and, possibly, open up their organisation to both juvenile and women players.

As it stands, city-based Galway Bay Lightning has no home to train during the week and, currently, travel out to Maree on Saturday afternoons to hone their skills. They had previously operated out of Mervue Community Centre but had to move when renovations began there.

Now, Club Captain and Chairman Conor Bell is pleading with the local sporting and business communities for assistance in an effort to centralise the club’s efforts within the city limits so they can consolidate their position as one of Ireland’s top inline hockey outfits.

If, like Talking Sport, you are unfamiliar with this sport it is, basically, hockey on roller skates – a variant of ice hockey and, indeed, field hockey. It is played on a smooth surface indoors with teams usually consisting of five players, including goalkeeper.

Although the sport dates back to the early 1900s, it has only been in Ireland since the mid 1990s. Toronto native Bell, a second year medical student at NUI Galway, explains it was first introduced into Galway around 2008 by two enthusiasts living in Oranmore.

“They used to play street hockey on their road. I think they used rollerblades but mostly with running shoes and a stick and a ball. Then they discovered the Irish League and they said ‘why don’t we start a team up in Galway?’ That team was made up of mostly Irish guys at the start,” he outlines.

Today, Galway Bay Lightning is one of two teams in the locality; the other is West Coast Pirates, an off-shoot of the successful Galway Pitbulls which oddly disbanded at the end of last year. Aside from its Irish contingent, Galway Bay Lightning boasts of players from Canada, the United States and Eastern Europe.

While they are a ‘Gold’ level – or top tier – outfit today, going unbeaten until losing to the Pitbulls in the national semi-finals last year, this was not always the case says Bell. “Galway usually finished up at or near the bottom but with more Canadians coming through, and more people joining, the last few years have been good.

“Last year, we were undefeated in the season but ended up losing in the ‘semis’ to the other Galway team, the Pitbulls. It was a 9am game up in Armagh so we had to get up at 5am in the morning and travel up where they had travelled up the night before and they were well rested for it. We lost but we had a good year though.”

Through word of mouth, the club has grown – it has approximately 30 members – and, consequently, they also boast a ‘Silver’ outfit, which Bell says “is sort of a middle of the pack team”. Bell puts the club’s durability down to the fact that everyone seems to enjoy being involved.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.