Search Results for 'John Fitzgerald'

Much in the same vein as any other severe engagement, it boiled down to one thing: spirit. It wasn’t skill or style, but sheer willingness to work that ensured Galway United’s seasonal objective of survival was achieved. A game both dull and putrid it might have been, but that barely bothered those who squeezed into cars and buses on the contented journeys back to the wild west.

Unbearable tension leading to unrestrained joy can best describe the final few seconds of Friday night’s decisive clash at the Belfield Bowl. Football fans can be a pessimistic bunch, and the nagging doubt that surely something will go wrong to tear their dreams to shreds is a nerve-racking experience. Referee Tom Connolly knew better on Friday night, drawing the game to a close 15 seconds ahead of schedule, safe in the knowledge that Galway’s solid defence would not be breached.

While the full gamut of sporting emotions may have been sampled, ultimately 2008 will be remembered as the year in which Galway United staged a remarkable rally to avoid relegation from the Eircom League’s premier division.

A major conference “Ireland: A New Vision and Direction” will be held in the Castlebar Campus of Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT) on Saturday April 4.

St Lachtain’s proved they were a team to be reckoned with last Sunday in Nowlan park.

The future local newspaper correspondent Seamus O’ Brien recited another instance that underlined how precious the rationed commodities were to the people who lacked them: While undertaking repairs for the Board of Health as a carpenter on a farm in the Callan district, he heard the woman of the house shouting that the kettle was boiling for the lunch break.

Explaining how his wife managed to cook white bread with all the restrictions imposed by rationing, the farmer told Seamus O’ Brien that she had “hit” upon a cooking method that many other women around the country were quietly adopting in the kitchen: They packed quantities of the flour into silk stockings and sieved all the unwanted bran out of it, so the flour could once again be used to produce the finest of traditional Irish white bread.

Petrol was strictly rationed during the Emergency too, with the lion’s share being reserved for vital public transport.

Dear Editor,

In the summer of 1940, following the fall of France to the Germans, thousands of young men enlisted in the Irish Army to defend their land against aggression, training at the Curragh and then being deployed to military barracks around the country.