Search Results for 'Billy Herterich'

Jimmy Cranny was born in Dublin in 1905. He was orphaned early in life, came to Galway when he was eight and it became his home from then on. He grew up to be a champion swimmer, a winner of the Prom Swim and a springboard diving champion of Connacht. He was a member of the Royal Lifesaving Society and became one of their first lifeguards. He later joined the Irish Red Cross.

Queen’s College Galway Rugby Club was founded in 1874, 150 years ago, making it the oldest rugby club in Connacht. They have a long and proud history and have helped nurture and boost many rugby careers helping players to the highest levels. They were a founding club of the Irish Rugby Football Union. They won their first Connacht Senior Cup in 1897 and have managed to hold that trophy aloft many times since. Their first victory in the Dudley Cup, played for by the three Queen’s Universities, was in 1905. They have featured many times in the Bateman Cup, an exclusive competition in which clubs participate by invitation only.

John O’Dowd got the inaugural juvenile soccer league (for boys under-16) underway in Galway in 1931-2. The clubs competing included; Crusaders, Hotspurs, Reds United, Emmetts, Unknowns, Bective Rangers and Hibernians. The swamp was the only soccer pitch available in Galway at the time. The league was a big success and this prompted the organisers to run a minor league in the 1932-33 season.

In 1925 there was a major debate in the Urban Council about a Garda report that two men from County Offaly who had been swimming in the sea in Salthill without any bathing costumes had been apprehended, and how the gardaí should deal with them. The debate was about the evils or otherwise of mixed bathing in Salthill.