Archive News
Versatile Black Fern helping to get Galway into shape
Date Published: 04-Apr-2013
SOME may know this lady as Connacht forward George Naoupu’s wife. However, that creates a false impression of 29-year-old fitness instructor Sene Naoupu as she is very much her own woman.
Having just launched her own licensed fitness programme in a number of gyms across Galway City, Naoupu, who qualifies to play for this country next year, is currently aiming to break into the Ireland women’s seven rugby team.
For own part, Naoupu has been playing rugby back in her native New Zealand since she was 13 years of age, featuring in an array of provincial and national competitions up through her teens and 20s while also trialling for the Kiwi women’s team, known international as the Black Ferns.
Unfortunately, during this period, the then semi-professional player struggled with anorexia and her life took a different direction for a while. It was on this journey that she met her husband George.
“We are both from the South Island [in New Zealand]. He is from Christchurch and I am from North Otago but we met in Dunedin. Most of our friends are professional rugby players, wives or partners and they set us up. I was hosting a radio sports show at the time, so I knew of George anyway.”
Still, Naoupu, who has also worked as a TV sports presenter, has always retained an interest in sport and fitness and when her Black Fern friend Kathleen Wilton visited her last year, the Otago prop encouraged Naoupu to trail for the Ireland women’s sevens set-up.
She subsequently attended the series of talent identification camps being run and now hopes to secure a place in the development side when the cut is made later this month. “I have been enjoying the training,” says the New Zealand born Samoan.
“At the moment, I am getting George to train me, just for the camps. I wrote my own programme and he is just the one who times it!” laughs Naoupu, who has lined out on several occasions for Galwegians’ 15-a-side since moving to the West of Ireland. “I hope I make it now.”
Arguably, the disadvantage Naoupu has is her age, given that she will turn 30 when she qualifies to play for Ireland and will be going on 33 when rugby sevens as a sport makes its debut at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
That said, she does offer a wealth of experience while the benefits of her own personal regime – running fitness classes – has also helped her to keep in tip-top shape. “At the first camp for the Ireland women’s sevens, I realised I was one of the fastest ones but I am also one of the oldest ones! So, I surprised myself.
“I felt really good and that was huge for me because that came down to the [fitness] programme I had put together. At that time, those classes in Ocean Fitness were all I was doing. So, to convert what I was doing and preaching into that aspect of my own training was really pleasing.”
In itself, that is an endorsement of her own fitness programme, The Senshaper Series, which was launched in a number of Galway gyms, including Ocean Fitness, both NRGs, NUIG Kingfisher and Active Fitness, earlier this year.
For Naoupu’s part, she already had extensive experience in this area. In addition to holding a Sporting Performance Level V certification from the Sports Institute of Otago – along with pursuing further post-graduate and other courses, such as Sports Business Management – she has also worked as a group fitness instructor as part of the International Les Mills network.
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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