The Plough and the All Stars

The Ploughing Championship isn’t all about days off school, tractors and muck, it comes with a smattering of sporting idols these days.

Sitting inside looking out at the torrential rain flooding the streets of Dublin we dread to think what the underfoot conditions are like at this year’s Ploughing Championships. The organisers went for the sunny south-east this time but alas, New Ross is being deluged with the same rain as the rest of us.

But for those who braved the conditions, there seems to be lots to do. We hear reports that some of the Leinster team were down there this morning, with the Heineken Cup in toe. They were getting dangerously close to Munster in New Ross but we reckon they were safe.

However, it was this stand that we thought was most interesting. Tweeted out by the GPA today, it tells us that Lar Corbett, Pa Bourke and Conor O’Mahony are all down at the festival of farming, with signed hurls ready to rock.

Reports that Tommy Walsh was found lurking beside the tent are both untrue, and hilarious.

One Mayo fan’s lucky day (sort of)

Result aside, Mayo fan Conor Duffy had an extremely lucky day on Sunday. Though he lives in Kilcock, Kildare, Conor’s father is a Mayo man so he wanted to be inside Croker to cheer James Horan’s men on.

He had no ticket but as the Mayo News reports today, he headed along to Dorset Street to see if he could pick one up. He didn’t know how literally he would do just that.

Conor met his father Paul on the thoroughfare near HQ and after telling his Da that he was giving up hope and going home Paul looked down to see the most remarkable thing on the ground; an All-Ireland ticket.

Not only was it a ticket, it was a really good ticket.

“The stub was gone but I decided that I would head down to the football ground and chance my arm,” Conor tells the paper. “We had gone no more than five feet when we saw another piece of paper on the ground. Dad picked it up and the two pieces read suite 617, seat 28. It was the missing stub. I could not believe it.

“I had given up all hope and it was like finding a golden ticket. I wasn’t going to shout out ‘did anyone lose a ticket’ because there were thousands on the street without tickets and they’d take my right arm off for one,” he admitted.

Conor spent the pre-match hiding at the bar of the suite in case anybody asked him how he got the ticket. When he eventually took his seat, nobody said anything, so Conor had one of the best seats in the house, for free. Almost a perfect day, eh?

“I had a great view right in the middle of the field in a corporate box for the All-Ireland final with Mayo playing. Apart from the result, the day could not have gone any better,” he said.

Ah yes, the result. Still, what a story.