“Ladies and gentleman, we’re back,” Michael Mahon, chairman of the National Ploughing Association, roared into the microphone on day one of the three-day ploughing championships in Ratheniska, Co Laois. “And we needn’t thank anyone for bringing us back.”
Anna May McHugh, the association’s long-standing managing director, was almost emotional to see the championship return after last year’s cancellation due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“To see all the line of tractors there, from every county in Ireland, it’s something else. There’s tremendous camaraderie between the ploughing fraternity. It’s lovely to be out in the country on a fine morning and see the land being ploughed.”
With just 1,000 people in attendance – down from 100,000 in previous years – this was very much a scaled-back affair.
As a result of the pandemic, there were no trade stands, no machinery on display and no politicians.
But the politicians were no loss as far as Mahon and McHugh were concerned.
“We’ve got this far without their help, and we’ll go further without their help,” she said, angry at the lack of a State grant for the association during the lockdown. Whether politicians will be invited back in the future “is something we’ll have to think about very carefully”, she said.
“If you had a tin whistle and you sent your name into the Government, a football, a hurl, anything at all, you’d get money” to keep you going during the lockdown, Mahon added. “I don’t know how much the GAA got. We couldn’t even get a shilling.”
Back to the future
Walking around on the first day, there was a sense of back-to-the-future about the 90th championship. It was possible to imagine this is how the event might have been all those decades ago.
Groups of men huddled in serious conference at the edge of freshly ploughed fields, supervisors ate their sandwiches at a picnic bench and others walked around in white surgical coats with “head supervisor” written in pen across the back.
While many seemed to be relishing the simplified atmosphere, others were missing the buzz of previous years.
"It's very strange. It's a different world. Even to come out here this morning, it's flat as a pancake," said Denis Keohane, from near Clonakilty in west Cork, who was supervising the horse class. He wondered if he'd ever again see the excitement of the massive events of earlier years again.
And then, at about 11am, a green Land Rover with a UK registration barrelled into the middle of the field, pulled up opposite a stand selling chicken fillet rolls, and disgorged A League of Their Own host Romesh Ranganathan and the show's team captains, former England footballer Jamie Redknapp and one-time international cricketer Freddie Flintoff, as well as former France footballer Patrice Evra.
The celebs – plus their crew of about 40 – were filming a “top-secret” television show. They apparently expected this to be a low-key affair and were dismayed to see every Irish media outlet in attendance, leading the assembled journalists to wonder how much research on the ploughing championships they had done.
Film crew
As some of the film crew marched around asking the Irish media to identify themselves, Redknapp, at least, seemed to have a handle on things.
“You have to lift the soil up ready for sowing the seed and that’s it in a nutshell,” he was heard saying, showing a keen grasp of the basics.
But at an event where most people were just happy to see old friends, they didn’t cause much of a stir.
“We haven’t seen each other in what? Two or three years,” said Barry White, as he collected his lunch with two other supervisors. “We normally meet every year at the local matches. So it’s nice to be back.”
White will be competing on Friday. Did he go to the gym to keep up the fitness during lockdown?
“No,” he laughed. “You’d hopping up and down off the tractor all the time.”
Lil Tracey from Garryhill, Co Carlow, was attending as a spectator to support her son, multiple world champion Eamonn Tracey, and her two grandsons, Sean and Stephen, who were competing for the first time. Her husband, John, twice came second in the nationals.
What’s it like living in a house with three generations of ploughing champions? “It’s grand until three or four days beforehand, when you have to listen to grinders and grinders and grinders,” she says.
It has been a tough year for the family after Eamonn’s wife Ailish died last summer following an illness. It was lovely to be back but “very emotional”, she said. “Today is a hard day because we’ll be thinking about it.”
For Jim Dempsey, this is his 71st ploughing championship.
“It’s a real reunion today,” the 87-year-old said.
“I’m sorry for the exhibitors, but I’m a ploughing enthusiast. There’s people here said to me today, ‘We live for this and this is our holiday’. It’s my holiday too. And thank God, I’m alive to be able to come again.”
