Mexican guitar maestros Rodrigo Y Gabriela are the newest additions to the Sligo Live line-up this October.
Cycle couple raise funds for suicide charity
By Danny Keown
A pilot and a former hockey international will begin an epic five-and-a-half day trek around Ireland this Sunday, and are due in Sligo on Tuesday afternoon.
First step taken to save Elsinore House
A Heritage Council funded conservation study is the first step in securing the future of the historic Elsinore House at Rosses Point.
Hidden behind a wall of ivy for over a decade, the future of Elsinore house at Rosses Point is suddenly much brighter with the awarding of a grant for the funding of a conservation report on the structure of this house, which the poet WB Yeats visited frequently in his youth and which featured in the painting of his brother, Jack Yeats.
Having only recently reacquired possession of the property, the timing was right for the descendents of William Middleton (1819-1882) when approached by representatives of An Taisce’s North West Local Association with the offer to work together to safeguard the ‘At Risk’ structure.
Built in the early 19th century and home to shipowner and alleged smuggler John Black, Elsinore later came into the ownership of William Middleton a senior partner in the highly successful 19th century firm of Middleton and Pollexfen which operated mills and traded far and wide with a fleet of barques and schooners.
William’s sister Elizabeth was grandmother to WB and Jack Yeats who, like their Middleton relatives, enjoyed many summers spent at Elsinore.
The poet Yeats wrote about Rosses Point and his time spent at the house in his ‘Reveries Over Childhood and Youth’: “There were great cellars under the house, for it had been a smugglers house a hundred years before, and sometimes three loud raps would come upon the drawing room window at sundown, setting all the dogs barking; some dead smuggler giving his accustomed signal.”
By the start of the 20th century, William Middleton’s offspring were still living at Elsinore during the summer months, however the history of the house in later years was marked by a succession of tenants and neglect that led to it falling into a ruinous state.
The 150th anniversary of the birth of Yeats in 2015 prompted renewed concern about the state of the property. This led to the Middleton Estate, comprised of William’s descendants, partnering with An Taisce North West in successfully applying for a Heritage Council grant that has enabled the commissioning of a conservation report on Elsinore house and its outbuildings.
It is hoped that this report will provide the basis for future interventions to safeguard and enhance this historic structure.
An Taisce North West is a Local Association of An Taisce, the National Trust for Ireland, a charity working to preserve and protect Ireland’s natural and built heritage. For further information, see: www.facebook.com/AnTaisceNorthWest
Teenager overcame broken back to win Irish gold
By Alan Finn
The past year has been like a script from a Hollywood movie for a Sligo teenager who overcame a serious back injury to celebrating a sporting triumph.
Keelan Kilrehill, a 15-year-old Colaiste Iascaigh (Easkey) student, recounted the accident last August which resulted in him breaking bones, including a vertebra.
“I was going down to my cousin’s house on my bike when I met a car on the road, I hit the brake to avoid hitting the car but I went over the handlebars and hit a tree and was unconscious.
“I woke up at the house and didn’t know what to do, it was a few hours before I really realised what had happened.”
The Dromore West native runs with the Moy Valley Athletics Club and plays GAA with St. Farnan’s, but Keelan had to put all of his regular sporting activities on the back burner for a number of months as he went through the recovery process.
For more on this story, be sure to pick up a copy of this week’s Sligo Weekender newspaper. In shops now!
Swim star Clodagh dived into the Channell challenge
The English Channel was not just conquered last week, it was tamed in a battle that Poseidon himself would quake at, as Sligo-born Clodagh Murray, from Larkhill Road, swam 21 miles / 32 km from England to France on Sunday 14 August.
Moygara castle part of the community
By Luke Henderson
The entire county of Sligo is steeped in history – North, East, West and South.
Little Green Cars Sligo gig
Dublin indie rock band, Little Green Cars will perform live on Saturday, October 29 in the Knocknarea Arena, IT Sligo as part of Sligo Live 2016.
Little Green Cars’ second album reinforces their status as one of the best bands in Ireland. Taking its title from the W.B. Yeats poem “Ephemera”, it is fitting that the band play the Festival as Sligo is the spiritual home of W.B. Yeats.
Released earlier this year, “Ephemera” garnered stunning reviews including 4 stars from The Irish Times who wrote “that the 12 songs sound like the most harmonious you’ll likely hear all year, however, is testament to the energy that has gone into them. Fear, loathing, remorse and anguish have rarely sounded so joyful”.
Little Green Cars were still in their teens when they were spotted and signed to Glassnote and recorded their widely-acclaimed 2013 debut “Absolute Zero” with producer Markus Dravs.
That album changed their lives, taking the five former school friends on tour everywhere from Europe and Australia to Russia and the States, which they criss-crossed six times in three years.
Now all in their early 20s, Little Green Cars are both a different band and the same five friends who met every Sunday aged 15 in singer Stevie Appleby’s garden shed to start writing songs. Those changes, their shared experiences and individual ups and downs are candidly documented in “Ephemera”, a gorgeous, grown-up album about, well, growing up.
Two deaths, relationship break-ups and their over two years’ worth of touring are among the key events that inform the album’s richly-textured, harmony-soaked rock songs. While the impact of those events will change over time, the intense emotions they evoked live on in the music.
All the time the band were on tour, they were writing new songs, some of which they honed live. All the time they were changing, as were family and friends back home, whose lives they could sometimes no longer relate to. Stevie and Faye O’Rourke – the band’s principal songwriters and interchanging lead vocalists – watched their love lives fall apart. All five questioned who they used to be and who they had become, not least guitarist Adam O’Regan, whose father passed away.
“It’s a transitional album,” says Stevie. “Lyrically, it’s all about change – the end of some eras, new beginnings, learning from the past and looking to the future.
Ephemera means things that are important to you, but only for a short time. That could apply to music or relationships or even a particular day.”
All five members of the band – completed by Donagh Seaver O’Leary on bass and Dylan Lynch on drums – contribute to the music and harmonies. Having written on the road, the quintet returned to Dublin in 2014 to make demos. By the end of the year, they were ready to record their first batch of songs.
Keen to co-produce, they sought a trusted collaborator. Enter Rob Kirwan, at whose treasure trove Dublin studio the band experimented with sounds, adding electronics, mastering reverb, bringing in a cellist and learning to play the toy-like Omnichord.
A dozen exquisitely-crafted, exceptionally-sung, sumptuously-produced songs shimmer with the myriad of emotions the band has been through – restlessness, regret, love, heartbreak, hope and acceptance among them.
Tickets to see Little Green Cars in Sligo are €26.50 plus service charge (standing) and there is a very limited number of tiered seated tickets (€29.50 plus service charge). Tickets go on sale today, Thursday August 18 at 10.30am from www.sligolive.ie Ticketmaster.ie and from the Hawk’s Well Theatre box office on 071-9161518.
Coaches will gather in Sligo for FAI workshop
THE Football Association of Ireland have rolled out a new programme, the Player Development Plan, aimed at enhancing underage Youth soccer structures across the country and, as a result, producing better players.
One of the core aims of this plan is as follows: “Implementation of a player-focused model based on enjoyment and skill development whilst reducing the emphasis on winning at all costs.”
A workshop on the FAI Player Development Plan is being held at IT Sligo’s Knocknarea Arena on Sunday, September 18 (1-4pm). Aimed at coaches working with teams in the Sligo-Leitrim Youths Schoolboys and Schoolgirls League, the workshop will be delivered by FAI High Performance Director Ruud Dokter. It is free entry to this workshop, which was officially launched on Tuesday of this week at IT Sligo.
One Youth soccer coach taking up the opportunity to attend the workshop on the FAI’S Player Development Plan is Ballymote Celtic coach Alan Farry, who has been coaching soccer teams locally for a number of years.
Farry has high hopes for the new plan as part of its remit is to ensure that all players in a squad get the opportunity to enjoy the beautiful game. He said: “It [the plan] is trying to be a bit more player-centred than things were done before. Ruud Dokter, the FAI High Performance Director, has come in and tried to change the way football is coached and played in this country.”
“Dokter was quite concerned about a lot of young kids playing 11-a-side football with big goals so that is what he is trying to change with, for example, the use of weighted footballs, smaller goals and nine-a-side games.”
“In my opinion it is about time – rolling substitutions had to happen, too, as we have had situations where you have nine or 10 subs on the bench but can only bring on four or five at a time and a couple of these would only get on for a few minutes. It is a welcome change and the kids are getting the game time they deserve.”
The success of Sligo-Leitrm representative sides, for example wins in tournaments such as the Foyle Cup and Galway Cup, reflects the improvement locally and the work being put in by coaches such as Farry.
While he believes Youth soccer in the north-west is heading in the right direction, a mentality of development over results must be emphasised.
“We want players playing different positions and getting as much game time as possible, they aren’t improving if they aren’t playing often and we have to change that mentality.”
“We always complain about the national team and the standard of football that was played under Trapattoni but international and domestic football is results driven, you have relegation, play-offs, qualifying for different tournaments, it is all down to results.”
“But in kids football it isn’t important. Kids will always be competitive and the only way they can improve their game is to play it the right way first and look for the results second,” he stressed.
Meanwhile, FAI Football Development Officer for Sligo, John Russell, is hopeful of a big turnout for September’s workshop.
He said: “In my role in Sligo, I am constantly looking to get more boys and girls playing the game and the FAI rolled out this new plan in December 2015 so we are nearly at a year since it began.”
“The workshop coming up at IT Sligo is about increasing awareness about the FAI’s Player Development Plan and educating coaches and parents on what we are trying to do.”
“Leagues will be played in the same format and we want all children getting game time. We want as many people to come down [to the workshop], have a look and see what happening and it might get them interested in getting involved in their local club.”
“We want more clubs springing up around the area and for me in my role I work closely with the schools and there is a huge amount of kids in Sligo who are playing in their school at lunch time but don’t have a club to go to so if we can provide more club and get more volunteers on board then we will do what we can because at the end of the day they just love playing football.”
Like many counties, the Sligo soccer scene faces competition from a variety of other sports, but John believes that football in the county is stepping into a bright future with the recent international call ups of local players.
“Soccer is in competition with a lot of other sports. When you look at Belgium and Spain they are playing it from a young age, but here you have basketball, soccer, gaelic, hurling and other sports so there is a lot of competition but in this region a lot of good stuff is happening terms of facilities and coaching and we are seeing players progressing and getting trials with international squads, we saw recently Seamie Keogh was selected for the Hibernia Cup and Robyn Kennedy has trained with the U-16 girls so there is a lot of work being done there.”
This workshop will also focus on the developing youth structures in Leitrim, where regional development officer Damon Kearney is placing primary focus on the establishment of more clubs in the county.
“Part of the role of a development officer is providing education for coaches, working with clubs and helping them put the infrastructure in place for young players. We want to work in areas where there isn’t a soccer club as such so we want to develop that. It will take time and volunteers to come in, but we will work them in a system that will hopefully help in building a club.”
Damon is calling on more volunteers to get involved in a good cause as prospective new football clubs provides a hugely beneficial outlet for kids who want to play football beyond the lunchtime or after school kick about.
“In terms of interest, boys and girls are playing soccer all across the county. Apart from Manor Rangers there isn’t any girls clubs so we really need to push that on but one of the big challenges is the recruitment of volunteers and people are a bit shy for a number of reasons, but we are asking for an hour or a few hours a week and that can benefit everyone in the long run, because that is what sport is all about, giving opportunities to young kids who want to go out and play the game with their friends.”
Quick thinking teen saves a life
By Becky Hammill
The quick thinking and lifesaving instincts of a 14-year-old girl prevented possible tragedy in Ballisodare on Monday.
Contrasting fortunes of two clubs
By Alan Finn
NO matter their beloved team’s place in the table or ambitions for the season, The Clash of the Rovers is always the standout out fixture for supporters of the Bit O’Red.
While the most recent periods of success have both come and gone for the clubs, the rivalry remains as strong as ever and Dave Robertson’s men will be keen to avenge what has been their only defeat at home to date which was suffered at the hands of their Dublin namesakes on the first night of the season in March.
A lot has changed since the last meeting of the teams (also a defeat to Shams in Tallaght). While the fortunes of Sligo’s Rovers have improved tenfold, the Tallaght outfit have gradually slipped into a decline as the season has gone on.
While it may have sounded like one of the most unexpected managerial casualties of the season, the sacking of Pat Fenlon should have come as no surprise to anyone.
Shams flattered to deceive under the guidance of Fenlon – comfortable against teams in the lower rungs of the Premier Division but failing to stamp their authority against those around them. Shams appeared to be all too comfortable as a side failing to challenge for the title, an unacceptable mindset as far as those passionate Hoops fans are concerned as they expected much more from a five-time Premier Division winning manager with a decent budget and squad at his disposal.
Fenlon’s departure midway through their two-legged European tie with Finnish side RoPS proved to be the final straw as their adventure began and ended with a whimper.
For the full story see this week’s Sligo Weekender newspaper, in shops now. Or subscribe to our digital edition which can be found on our homepage.
