Archive News
Youthful Moycullen produce heartening performance in falling to league champions
Date Published: 18-Oct-2012
UL Eagles 78
Moycullen 62
THE defending cup and league champions UL Eagles proved too much for a young Moycullen side on Saturday night in Limerick as the Galway outfit lost by 16 points
For the second consecutive week, player-coach Salva Camps was forced to game plan for a tough away fixture without his own name or that of Cian Nihill’s in the line-up.
While Camps can take some solace in noting that that situation is set to change for this weekend’s home tie with Neptune, it did little to boost confidence ahead of last Saturday’s fixture against the pre-season favourites to repeat last year’s exploits, Eagles.
Credit to the Moycullen squad that travelled, however, as despite being littered with U20 players, they never let Eagles relax and remained within striking distance for much of the game. Little separated the teams after seven minutes with particularly fine play from Moycullen’s American player Pat Sullivan, who led all scorers in the game with 24 points.
But Eagles’ size and depth did eventually tell and they entered the half time break up 13. Having disposed of rivals and previous champions Killester by 25 points the weekend before, Eagles came out confident for the second half, which showed in their excellent shooting early on.
This helped them maintain their advantage despite spirited performances from the O’Brien brothers, Paul and Stephen who ended the game with ten and seven points respectively.
Moycullen found the task of marshalling 6ft 10inch centre Jason Killeen particularly difficult and were unable to stop him en route to recording a double double of ten rebounds and 16 points in the contest.
“Limerick are a bit further in their development compared to us right now,” said Moycullen coach Camps after the game.
“We have a lot of young players and Limerick played physical, they pushed us everywhere. Our players need to get used to this. They have been very good very quickly, but can be better the more they play and experience at this level.”
With Nihill certain to return this weekend, and Camps also likely to be involved, Moycullen can build on the excellent performances from their young players over the past two weeks and enter Saturday’s game against Neptune at 3.45 in NUIG with genuine aspirations of a home win.
Neptune, like Moycullen, have suffered losses in their first three home games. One would be foolish to read too much into their record, however, as two of those losses have come courtesy of a last second basket, losing to UL Eagles and UCC Demons by one and two points respectively.
Their other loss was a respectable six point defeat to UCD Marian away from home.
“Neptune are a good team. They can score a lot of points and they are very fast up and down the court. If we can slow them down, we have a very good chance because I think we will be able to score on them as well, so Saturday should be a close game,” said Camps.
Moycullen: P. Sullivan 24, P. O’Brien 10, S. O’Brien 7, I. Burke 6, S. Candon 5, J. O’Brien 4, P. Lyons 2, N. Cunningham 2, S. Tummon 2, D. Costello.
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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