VAST empty concourses, just eight bookies, and only a thousand fans on Galway Plate day, definitely not heartbreaking but it was a bit sad.

Granted the lack of traffic, hawkers and drunken goons is actually a positive, but during a festival we can all take the rough with the smooth.

It feels like the management at Galway have Maya Angelou’s poem And Still I Rise stuck on the dressing room wall for a bit of inspiration, given the lengths they have reached for to make this week happen.

The determination of the Galway team to try and get as many people involved who can’t be on-site was impressive.

They managed to find one of the last remaining horseboxes not yet turned into a coffee shop to fashion into an interview space.

Here, through the medium of video, many of racing’s great and good shared their experiences of the Plate on videos throughout the day. Sir AP McCoy won the race, a fact that will be forever burnt into the memory of all attendees given how often he seemed to be on the screens around the track.

It should be noted these people were generally those lucky enough to win the Plate in previous years not those who missed the break and may as well have pulled up.

Danny Mullins would have been hopeful of getting a good spin in the race but he was proving a continuity nightmare on the screens.

His promotional interview about the Plate was prior to his spinal injury and the race preview was carried out in full spinal brace, which he managed to brand with a Tote snood.

Surely Danny was missing the weighroom or the Champagne Bar as it was at Galway this week. It was nice for the jockeys but there were definitely a few longing looks towards that infamous Moet branded balcony from some well-heeled festival regulars.

Course and distance

At Galway, course experience counts for plenty, and the punters who were in through the gates an hour before the first race got the best seats, undercover, near the bar.

Although they hedged their bets too severely as miraculously there was almost no rain over the entire afternoon.

The balance for Galway to all of their potential customers is delicate. There is so much brilliant video content online for those at home while also attempting to ensure an enjoyable, safe experience for just 1,000 punters in what must be ultimately a loss-making exercise.

The effort seems genuine from all sides even if there is a slight lack of sure-footedness from patrons about protocols.

“Can we sit down here for a cigarette?” One punter enquired as the band struck up the opening bars of Folsom Prison.

It felt fitting at the time, asking for permission to do something he would never have given a second thought to had he been in attendance two years ago.

Different

Of course it is different, everything is different. It’s not as good, obviously, live sport needs crowds to really deliver the true excitement and buzz the performances deserve.

Is the focus the racing? In previous years, what feels like a previous life at this stage, there was an obvious separation between ‘racing people’ and party people’ at Galway. A tactic that works better here than at almost any other track.

The music and various forms of entertainment used to be sent down the far end, which is now a Covid vaccine centre while the racing is focused at the other end of the venue.

The melding of both this year has led to a brilliant event within the confines. Crucially, however, and despite what is said in the racing media, Galway is not all about the racing.

There is usually a holiday vibe. It falls on the builders’ holidays, the normally straight-laced open a couple of buttons, the regally coiffed let their hair down, there is a real sense of fun, a bit of divilment, an acceptance of behaviour that might normally raise eyebrows.

Stuff happens, and it is fine, it’s Galway, you get a pass. Desir Du Large felt like the equine embodiment of some of the usual punters later in the day as he weaved around before taking race three on Plate Day.

He wouldn’t have looked out of place on Shop Street at 11 o’clock that night, except he was a winner.

Compliance replaces the annual madness

THE Covid compliance officers have a thankless task policing the reluctant and ignorant who were in short supply.

At this stage lads, surely ye all know the mask covers the nose. But generally, everyone was well behaved, almost comically so.

Walking around attempting to make sense of just what was so different this time around, beyond the obvious. That was it, there was no madness.

Galway and the IHRB have done a brilliant job of staging this event in such trying circumstances. It is effectively a weird hybrid that nobody wants in its current guise, a committee’s compromise.

Anybody stepping out of line was doing just that, they were out of line and it was clear and obvious. A bit of misbehaviour is part of the charm, almost part of the fabric of a true Galway experience.

Walking around observing people diligently adjusting their masks and drinking at their assigned tables is a mighty achievement given our love of a party, some messing and totally natural inclination to share the experience with strangers.

The band ploughs on, to polite applause. He just played Wagon Wheel, it’s not for polite applause. It’s for acting the bollocks and knocking over pints and linking arms with strangers, stamping about completely out of time.

Dance like nobody is watching, escape the humdrum mundanity of our existence for as many of the seven days as one can humanly endure on the banks of the Corrib. Go mad, have fun, what happens in Galway stays in Galway and in 360 or so days time the fear will have eased and we will go again.

Just not this time around, is it different, obviously worse, but far better than nothing. When the choice is go to Galway or don’t go to Galway, the answer is always the same.

It’s a once-in-a-lifetime situation, we can deal with it. We will all be back next year, vaccinated and ready to party, it will be different from 2021.

Willie Mullins will be back winning big races, and Dermot Weld taking those maidens. Oh, wait…