POLITICIANS, priests, Provos, ploughmen, policemen, presidential hopefuls, press people: where else would you get such a selection other than at the National Ploughing Championships?
Yesterday we had the prime minister, Enda Kenny, who arrived not long after the prelates, Diarmuid Martin, Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, and Rev Ian D Henderson, president of the Methodist Church in Ireland. These reverend gentlemen came together to visit the ecumenical stand at the championships to pray in a shared space and to ring the Eucharistic Congress Bell to promote next year’s congress in Dublin.
A colleague described the scene as a “Father Ted” moment, because directly beside the inter-church stand was another where youngsters were shooting paintballs at targets. The hymns were punctuated by gunfire.
As for the Taoiseach, he was firing on all cylinders too as he tossed basketballs into a ring at the National Dairy Council stand during a walkabout of the site.
The Taoiseach got a warm reception as he shook hands, kissed babies and hugged supporters, and there were pools of applause as he worked his way through the crowd.
He had visited the ploughmen on the competition plots before heading back to the centre of the site to be mobbed.
There was no sign of the other “P’s” – the protesters. Even though the peat cutters from Kildare had a stand and Luke “Ming” Flanagan was on site to support them, there was not a peep out of them yesterday. Nor was there any sign of the Roscommon hospital campaigners.
There were literally thousands of posters of all shapes and sizes on site, but the one that attracted most attention was the large, expensive poster of Martin McGuinness, which appeared early on Tuesday. There was a lot of speculation the poster would have had to be ordered well in advance of Sunday last, when the Sinn Féin decision was taken to run him for president.
Mary Davis, who had a stand on the site, was still here yesterday and so too was Gay Mitchell, who was given the full treatment by the Taoiseach – he praised him up to the high heavens and said all of Fine Gael was behind him.
Among the praises he heaped on his candidate was that he was a man of principle and a politician who had proved himself locally, nationally and internationally. He was the only man for the Park.
The publicans were doing well as visitors took time off to have a few drinks and meet friends as the site reverberated to country and western music, courtesy of the Irish Farmers Journal.
It would be very unfair not to mention the pole climbers. For the first time at this event we had the All Ireland Husqvarna Pole Climbing Championships.
This involved men racing to climb tree trunks 30m high and 50cm in diameter. Racing against the clock, many young men attending tried their hand under the instruction of former world champion Terry Bennett.
Overall, the championships could only be described as powerful, pleasant and very profitable for the National Ploughing Association.