Galway GAA PRO Seamus Finnerty has completed a number of interesting online projects in recent months.
The Annaghdown man, who has been a loyal and distinguished servant to Galway sport, carried out significant work when no matches were played between January and the start of this month.
A substantial record of all County Board officers has been completed, while a photograph of every local senior, intermediate, junior, under 21, and minor county championship winning outfit since 1980 is now posted on the Galway GAA website.
“It started back in January when I was going through the website one day, I was looking at the roll of honour which only had a couple of teams from the 1980s,” he explains. “It was a mixed grill all the way down so I decided that I would start a few projects.
“The first thing I did was list the officers, I did the officers of the County Board, Hurling Board, Football Board, North Board, and West Board. The County Board officers began back in 1890. I got the data of some of the old officers from old annuals and I had to use the local paper archives to go through convention reports to fill in all the different boards from 1890 to 2021.”
While it was a demanding challenge, Finnerty accomplished the mission. “It certainly was painstaking,” he laughs. “The only thing about it is when you start something, you will keep dragging on until you finish. It took me about seven weeks to put all of those names in place.
“When I had that done I decided to add the clubs to them, where possible. I even found a few old photographs. The first treasurer of Galway GAA was back in the late 1890s, Andrew Manning. I found a photograph of him, he was from Ahascragh.”
Once the officers task was done and dusted, next on the agenda was gathering photographs from the past 40 years. “Phase Two was upgrading the roll of hour - the photographs and captions of all of our county winners at senior, intermediate, junior, under 21, and minor,” he adds.
“I did them by scanning the annuals from back over the years. It was a matter of scanning them, then going into Photoshop, sizing them and I had to type all of the captions. At the end of it I had about 7,000 names in more than 500 teams that are on the system at the moment.
“I decided to go from 1980 because you only had three annuals printed previously to that. You had a couple back in the 60s so I didn’t have access to teams.
“It was a job I’d never finish if I went that way so I decided to go from a time when I’d be able to scan the teams from the annuals and photographs I’d taken myself along the way.”
Assistance was provided by Frank Coyne and Michael Monaghan, who remain heavily involved in Galway GAA. “I had most of the annuals, but I was short four or five along the way,” Finnerty states.
“Frank Coyne from Ballygar collects annuals so he gave me some of the missing ones and Michael Monaghan had a few too. Between the three of us we had every annual from 1980 up until 2020.”
Since March 2020 many lessons have been learned, with the importance and relevance of sport underlined, particularly during enforced spells of inactivity. “I knew if I started from the 1980s I’d be able to complete it - 2019 was the last annual we had because we had none in 2020 because of Covid,” he responds. “I said I would do 1980 until 2020 which is 40 years. It was never done before, it would be there for people whenever they wanted to access it. All the photographs and captions are there, it took a lot of work with the scanning. It is a slow process.”
Every All Ireland winning Galway outfit is also on display on the website. “After that I said I would do all Galway’s All Ireland winning teams, photographs and captions of every senior, under 21, minor, junior, and intermediate team,” Finnerty reveals.
“We have every level from 1923 until 2020 when we won the Under 20 football. It was challenging enough, we had a few teams like the 1931 Junior winning team, there was a photograph taken when they won Connacht. There was no All Ireland photograph available, we eventually found one after four weeks of searching. That was the missing one.”
Solutions were found ensuring a valuable resource was stitched together.
