Ireland’s second most prestigious stake is down to the last six dogs, as the Hennerty Sales Irish Laurels Final goes off at Curraheen Park Stadium in Cork on Saturday night.
By Johnny Moyles
The Hennerty Sales Irish Laurels Final will be shown live on RTE Online on Saturday night, and huge crowds have attended the event so far with a bumper crowd is expected to see the action. There is an added element of local rivalry to this year’s event with a couple of dogs with Kerry connections – Deerfield Deerfield Music and Razldazl Rioga – hotly fancied to perform well. The latter is owned by none other than legendary sporting commentator Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh, Rioga being a gift from the IGB on the great man’s retirement earlier this year.
It’s a brilliant renewal of one of Ireland’s oldest events – it has Classic status – and it is fairly wide open.The Laurels was first run in 1944 but the UK equivalent is a good bit older and the first winner of what was to become a huge draw for the public (tens of thousands attended the big finals back then) was Kilbrean Boy. Here’s an amusing tale (first posted a couple of years ago on my old manaboutdogblog) of how this fellow put his name in the history books.
I was down in Kerry for a weekend with my wife. After an afternoon of sightseeing, we decided to stop at a watering hole in Killarney town centre. We plumped for The Laurels pub, which turned out to be a greyhound man’s boozer.
As I gazed around the pub I noticed an oil painting of a greyhound above the fireplace. Straight away, doggy man that I am, I asked the barman who it was. He said it was Kilbrean Boy who was owned by the pub’s owners, the O’Leary family, back in 1930 when he went to England and won The Laurels at Wimbledon.
He then produced a masterpiece. Sitting pride of place behind the bar in a glass case was the actual Laurels trophy presented to Kilbrean Boy after his success. It is a beautiful trophy – far more substantial than the crystal that seems to be de rigeur in this day and age – depicting a superb bronze greyhound with laurels arching over him.
The NGRC (the sport’s governing body in the UK back then) had tried to get it back off the owners for a museum or something, and replace it with a replica but the O’Learys weren’t having any of that nonsense. They had won it fair and square and it was theirs to keep.
The barman told me a great story about the night of the race. Mr O’Leary went over for the final, and left two barrels of Guinness outside the pub ready to be tapped should Kilbrean Boy succeed. Mr O’Leary would telephone with the result – and if the dog won, there was free drink for the night!
Now here’s the thing – there were only two telephones in Killarney in 1930. One was at the Market Cross, and the other was in the Post Office. Anyway, the phone rang, the dog (trained by S.J. Orton) had won and everyone celebrated. The brindle son of Loafer and Clinker Lass was the toast of O’Leary’s pub and the drinkers of Killarney.
It must have been hilarious an hour later when Mr O’Leary rang and gave word that his pride and joy had indeed won the most prestigious track prize of the time, only to be told that the pub had been celebrating for an hour already. It turns out the Postmaster was a bit of a joker!
Incidentally, the Hennerty Sales Irish Laurels Final winner will bag €30,000. The English Laurels this year is worth just £6,000.
To keep tabs on the form, here’s the rundown from the Hennerty Sales Irish Laurels Semi-finals:
Watch the action live and free on www.rte.ie or by logging onto www.igb.ie.
