There's no harrow class at the ploughing championships, which is probably just as well. Watching the plough competitions is harrowing enough for anyone.
The chances of Sky buying the exclusive television rights appear slim, and even Eurosport might draw the line here.
All the same it has its fans, and a big draw yesterday was the competition for women, or "farmerettes", to use the preferred technical term. Farmerettes plough by the same rules as non-ette farmers, except in one important respect. Whereas male competitors must plough a lonely furrow, females are allowed a mechanical assistant - usually male - to help with the frequent pit-stops and to shout advice during what may be loosely termed "the action".
Like soccer managers, the mechanics are sometimes Svengali-type figures who you know would prefer to be driving the tractor. Like soccer managers too, they're confined to the sideline, or the "scribe mark" as it's known in ploughing.
It's a lot easier to pass the time in the trade village, where you also meet faster-moving sportspeople, the Kilkenny senior hurling team, for example.
Non-farmer D.J. Carey accompanied them with the McCarthy Cup, just part of a hoard of precious metal won by the black-and-ambers at all age levels this year. Such is the extent of Kilkenny's "silver mountain" that there's talk in agricultural circles of introducing a set-aside scheme for the county's underage teams, whereby other counties would pay them to isolate a few generations of schoolboys, and agree not to cultivate any hurling in them.
The extreme sport of mass handshaking was also on display yesterday, with Macra man Brendan Morrissey setting a one-day world record of 14,189. It could have been more, except his hourly rate was slowed by politicians dropping by for photo opportunities. The Minister for Justice was handshake number 10,704, for example, but then he met junior minister Noel Treacy, and it took a minute and a half for them to shake hands from all the available angles before Morrissey could get on to number 10,705 (Tom Parlon).
"They're holding up the queue," muttered somebody. "They might as well, they're holding up the country," replied a neighbour.