Archive News
United boss sets off on long road to recovery
Date Published: {J}
NEW Galway United manager John Brennan has a number of changes he wants to see at the club, from wage structures to the attitude of players, but the first change he wants to see is in relation to his own name – to be referred to by his name, rather than his nickname.
Brennan is immediately identifiable to League of Ireland supporters throughout the country by his nickname ‘Jumbo’, but he says he wants to draw a line between ‘Jumbo’ Brennan the player, and John Brennan the manager.
“I got the nickname in school in St Enda’s from Raymo O’Brien and Mike Clancy, I’ve no idea why but they started calling me ‘Jumbo’ and it stuck. That was okay in school and as a player, but I’m a manager now, and I’m John Brennan the manager,” he explains.
He’s not forceful on that matter, but it is a different story in relation to the infrastructure – or rather, the lack of it – at the club.
“Every club in Galway has their own pitch, they either own it, or it is a Council pitch, but it is theirs to use and look after. Every club, that is, except Galway United, the top club in Galway. I mean, think about it, that is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard,” says the man who is third on Galway United’s scoring chart, having hit 49 goals in three spells at the club.
“I want to build a structure here, I want to put underage teams in place and compete locally, but it would be madness to do that when you don’t even have a pitch. That is something that needs to be addressed, someone needs to make a decision to put a certain amount of money aside every week with the intention of developing training facilities,” he says.
We meet in the manager’s ‘office’ in Terryland Park, the most Spartan of rooms in a portakabin which features nothing more than a bare desk, a grey filing cabinet and a worn red carpet, but Brennan doesn’t seem to mind, and he speaks with an infectious enthusiasm about the challenges he faces with the club.
It is no secret that United are financially crippled, so how does Brennan see things panning out over the next few years?
“I want to look at scholarships, get players jobs, onto FAS courses, those kind of things that will cut down the wage bill, it’s a more sustainable model. Have players on an amateur basis, but offer them incentives, there’s got to be bonuses, a bonus for a league finish, for scoring 10 goals, the carrot of a professional contract, that kind of thing,” he explains.
Brennan was appointed as caretaker manager in September following the departure of Sean Connor, and was last week named as full-time manager for the 2012 season, becoming the 21st manager to take charge of the club.
That spell saw him take charge of the team for the final regular season games, and the two-leg promotion/relegation play-off with Monaghan United, with United losing all nine games. Did that dreadful run not put him off taking on the role in a permanent capacity?
“I thought about it, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t, but the way I look at it, I know the players I want to bring in, and they’ll play the way I want them to. The players have to have the right attitude, they have to have passion, they have to have commitment, they have to have pride in playing for this club. lf I get that, we’ll be on the right track.
“You need to get discipline and attitude right from the start. I h
ave no problem with people making mistakes, we all make mistakes, but it is how you react to those mistakes, you have to learn from them and not make them again,” he says.
During the course of our chat, he mentions the need for commitment and pride a number of times, and his focus on those two traits is little surprise when he reveals his own biggest regret from his playing career.
“I joined Sligo Rovers for the 1994/95 season, and it was a disaster. I was living in Galway and was supposed to train during the week, but I just didn’t bother. I’d always find an excuse – my foot was a bit sore, I’d train twice as hard tomorrow, it was raining, that kind of thing. I moved to Shamrock Rovers half way through the season, but I just wasn’t fit. So yeah, that was my biggest regret. I wasted a season because I was just bloody lazy,” he says.
Brennan joined Galway United for the 1991/92 season, and finished the season with six goals to his name in a campaign that saw United relegated after finishing bottom of the 12-team Premier Division. His next two seasons were far more productive, as he finished as the club’s top scorer with 14 goals in the 1992/93 season, as United bounced straight back in winning the First Division title.
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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