Archive News
WhoÕs the right one for Plate
Date Published: 25-Jul-2012
John McIntyre
WHEN Dermot Weld turned out a record breaking 11 winners at the Galway Summer festival two years ago, there was a general presumption that the meeting’s most successful trainer ever had surely reached the peak of his dominance of the country’s most popular racing fixture.
But Weld fairly blew that theory out of the water 12 months ago as his string blitzed Ballybrit in the most spectacular fashion by landing 17 of the 52 races at the festival, an incredible strike rate of almost 33%, with the highlights being the triumphs of Stunning View in the Topaz Mile and Rock City in the Ladbrokes Handicap.
The Master of Rosewell has naturally been playing down the yard’s prospects of even coming close to emulating their staggering 2011 feats next week, but there is no doubt that punters who shows blind faith in Weld’s runners are still likely to have the better of the argument with bookmakers over the seven day meeting.
Yet, Weld’s prospects of landing either of the festival’s two landmark races, the Tote Galway Plate or the Guinness Galway Hurdle, look in the remote category. His only entry in the hurdle, Teach Nua, is rated 64th of the 74 entries and has no chance of making the maximum field of 20 runners.
At least, Weld is set to be represented in the Galway Plate with Daffern Seal, impressive winner of his Beginners Chase at last year’s festival, his leading hope. Not seen since finishing sixth in the amateur riders’ National Hunt Chase at Cheltenham last March, the seven-year-old probably lacks the experience to land a handicap of this magnitude. Prince Erik could be the yard’s other representative, but the grey – tailed off on his previous run in the Irish Grand National – doesn’t possess the necessary gears to trouble the big race principals.
With three-time Grade One winner, Follow The Plan, heading the weights, there is a somewhat unbalanced look to the Galway Plate field. Last year’s Punchestown Gold Cup winner and hero of the Betfred Bowl at Aintree in April, is rated up to 17lbs superior to the rest of the field bar the 2011 first and second, Blazing Tempo and Wise Old Owl respectively, and ante post favourite, Blackstairmountain.
It’s a big ask lumping top weight around in the Galway Plate, but connections of Follow The Plan are not tilting at windmills as General Idea, Life Of A Lord and Ansar, have all carried similar burdens to big race Ballybrit success in the last 20 years. Furthermore, Ollie McKiernan’s stable is flying in recent months, a situation which also underlines the prospects of their second contender, Whodoyouthink, an impressive 17 lengths winner of a conditions chase at Punchestown in May, and our fancy to land the €200,000 event.
Blazing Tempo, having gone up a stone for last year’s triumph, may sidestep a repeat bid for the Plate in favour of running in the Guinness Hurdle, especially as the talking horse for the race, Blackstairmountain, is in the same ownership and also trained by Willie Mullins. The seven-year-old has mixed it with the best of company in his novice career and ‘warmed up’ for the Plate with an effortless win on the flat at Bellewstown recently.
The John Kiely trained Wise Old Owl, now rated 10lbs higher since his exploits 12 months ago, hasn’t appeared in public in the interim, but still commands respect as does Casey Top, winner of the McSweeney Arms Hotel Handicap Chase in Killarney in May, Edward O’Grady’s Irish Grand National second, Out Now, the progressive Raptor, another Mullins potential challenger, and possibly the Ted Walsh trained Devil’s Elbow, through the five-year-old has a number of other engagements in Galway.
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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