Opinion
Rural rugby in Connacht hit by numbers drop off
Talking Sport with Stephen Glennon
One of the stalwarts of local rugby, Monivea RFC’s Padraic McGann, has called on the IRFU to tackle the problems of falling numbers in the domestic game in rural areas due to emigration and he proposes they look to instate the sport into every national school countrywide to combat this decline.
While other sporting organisations, such as the GAA, may be better able to absorb the losses, McGann insist most rural rugby clubs are struggling after a half decade of mass emigration. For Monivea’s part, they had the large numbers to cope at the outset but this ongoing trend is now having a major impact.
The collapse of the construction industry not only forced many of their tradesmen abroad but those who have chosen to stay at home have ended up working jobs not really conducive to a sporting lifestyle – or at least team sports.
“It has been three or four tough years,” says the Monivea RFC Treasurer. “The majority of our players were tradesmen and now this recession has come and it has closed our ‘university’. I looked on our university as FAS. Gone are the electricians, blocklayers, carpenters and plumbers, so many trades.
“We had 20 [tradesmen] at one stage and of those you always had 10 or 11 players – your hard core – available. They had a job locally and the local man would let them off to play with us. They were different times. What has replaced that? There is a total vacuum now and nothing has replaced it.”
He ponders what the future holds for rural rugby and believes after four or five years the penny is now beginning to drop. “Now, rugby people in Connacht are beginning to understand that. To play U-20 in Connacht is a huge problem because the clubs are struggling to field teams at that grade.
“At underage, we are doing a bomb up to U-17, as is every other club, and then from 17 to 19, you are losing about 50%. After 19, what you are holding onto, you just don’t know where they will end up with jobs and everything. You see, when we had the ‘university’, they had jobs as plasterers and plumbers.”
He recalls a few years ago contacting 41 young men from the club who were eligible for the U-20 rugby team. “I think 19 of them were in the big supermarkets – SuperValu, Tesco, Dunnes Stores, Lidl and Aldi – and most of these were country people, farmers, who you thought would never end up working there.
For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.
Bradley Bytes – a sort of political column with Dara Bradley
Brendan McGrath’s greatest achievement in Galway was also his biggest failure.
When assessing the legacy of the Chief Executive of Galway City Council’s 10-year tenure, it is impossible to ignore Galway 2020.
Without McGrath, Galway would not have been European Capital of Culture. Of that there is no doubt. But the buck stops with him too, when assessing what contributed to the failures of the project.
Months after becoming City Manager in 2013, the Tipperary native convened a working group.
It contained key personnel on his management team and others with experience of Galway’s arts scene. He set an ambitious target: secure the prestigious status of European Capital of Culture in 2020.
This was the sort of vision Galway had long yearned for from civil servants at City Hall. He had confidence, too, to match the idea.
In a Tribune interview in February 2014, McGrath said he was “not contemplating failure” in his bid to win the designation, dubbed “Galway’s Olympics”.
This was big stuff; a bold, ambitious statement from the top of Galway City Council, an organisation that had suffered low morale due to various scandals, including the Eyre Square revamp debacle.
McGrath expended much sweat to win the accolade. He put in the hours, burning the midnight oil to prepare a bid book, or application, to host the year-long event.
Galway was up against Limerick, Dublin, and the ‘Three Sisters’ of the South-East, a joint bid by Waterford, Kilkenny and Wexford.
During this competitive phase, when European judges assessed applications, a sort of omertà operated in Galway whereby criticism, no matter how constructive, was frowned upon.
At that stage, it mattered not. Galway won the designation. And the outpouring of joy and relief on the city’s streets when it was announced was genuine.
But the omertà, the ‘see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil’ approach, continued when it did matter. A policy of ignoring or attacking detractors meant that valid points about shortcomings of the organisation in the lead-in to 2020 were not addressed, or were acknowledged too late.
In short, they believed their own bullsh*t. They adopted a siege mentality. Not all of that was McGrath’s fault. But it was his baby; he had the ability to influence that attitude.
A benign assessment of his contribution to the Galway 2020 disaster was that he had too much vision.
A more critical evaluation suggests the bid book he signed off on was never achievable in the first place; it was packed with promises that could not be delivered and, inevitably, the final product was destined to disappoint. And disappoint it did.
The project wasn’t helped by Covid-19, or weather disruptions to the opening ceremony at The Swamp, as Cllr Terry O’Flaherty (Ind) pointed out at McGrath’s final Council meeting as CE.
That nobody else – not even the man himself – even mentioned Galway 2020 during farewell speeches, speaks volumes about McGrath’s biggest feat and failure.
This is a shortened preview version of this column. For more Bradley Bytes, see the June 2 edition of the Galway City Tribune. You can buy a digital edition HERE.
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
It’s impossible to put an exact figure on it, but the consensus by now is that there are actually more Irish bars outside of Ireland than there are pubs in Ireland itself.
Covid played its part in this, signalling the death knell for so many licenced premises here, but in truth the pendulum was already swinging in that direction.
Two years ago, the Drinks Industry Group of Ireland estimated that there were 6,788 still in business here – and that was after one in five Irish pubs had closed their doors since 2005. Since then, Covid further accelerated that reduction.
At the same time the most recent figures produced by the Irish Pubs Global Federation – admittedly for 2015 when the organisation was originally launched – estimated that there were approximately 6,500 Irish pubs doing business outside of Ireland.
And there’s no reason to think that number hasn’t grown since.
There’s a BBC Radio 4 programme called More or Less – where experts attempt to answer listeners’ burning questions – which calculated that there is at least one Irish bar in more than 160 of the world’s 195 countries.
Which all begs the question; what actually makes a pub an Irish pub; is it having Guinness on tap or at least in cans, a few tricolours on the wall, shamrocks on the pint, trad tunes all day?
Is it wood-panelled walls, loads of old antique signs for cigarettes and long-vanished whisky – or is it the warmth of the reception that comes from having at least one Irish member of staff behind the counter?
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
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Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Inside Track with John McIntyre
In the wake of Limerick’s thumping victory over Kilkenny (2-20 to 0-15) in the National League Final at Pairc Uí Chaoimh in early April, a collective groan emanated from the other elite hurling counties, together with widespread resignation that the Shannonsiders wouldn’t be stopped in their quest for four consecutive All-Ireland titles.
Fast forward a little less than two months and the hurling championship has arguably become the most unpredictable ever, a scenario underlined by the weekend happenings in both Leinster and Munster. As it stands, it would take a brave individual to nail their colours to the mast about where the Liam McCarthy Cup will be residing this winter.
The way things are going, anything could happen. Take Wexford for instance. Just a week after embarrassingly losing a 17-point lead to minnows Westmeath, they came out and defeated Kilkenny to preserve their Leinster championship status, despite conceding five goals to the Cats. When did Kilkenny last lose a game after rattling the opposition net so many times? Possibly never.
Over in Thurles on the same day, a winless Waterford team already out of the championship and missing key players like Conor Prunty, Michael Kiely, Austin Gleeson and Jamie Barron due to injury, also upset the odds against a previously unbeaten Tipperary team who thought that they were already as good as in the Munster final.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
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