Late great characters

SINCE our last review, we have sadly lost some great characters and contributors to the showing world, including the great Wexford horseman and exhibitor Ger Murphy; Moate Show’s Larry Dunican; Northern Ireland Festival committee member George Boyd, Connemara breeder Peter Molloy, known for his Dooneen prefix and from the south-east, Susie Lanigan-O’Keeffe whose Suma Stud bloodlines left an indelible mark on the showring, and breeder Tom Moloney Snr. who judged too.

In July we bade farewell to that remarkable photographer Ruth Rogers whose decades of work within the bloodstock, sport horse, Connemara and greyhound worlds have left a valuable archive and graced the walls and mantlepieces of countless Irish households.

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Evergreen: Another Connemara ambassador is Alicia Devlin Byrne’s Blackwood Fernando. The pair won the popular puissance, one of Clifden’s signature events, to add to this pony’s lengthy list of victories.

The Dance: Clarecastle provided another excellent afternoon of top-class showing between the Banner Broodmare Championship and the Ennis Municipal Authority-sponsored All Ireland colt foal final, won by the all-conquering Parkmore Tyson. It was Susanne Kelly’s delighted jig when hers and husband John’s Susie’s Diamond Miss won the feature broodmare class that summed up what it means to these exhibitors to win a big class, particularly with a home-bred line going back several generations to the Buckley family’s winning mare, Morning Star.

The Commitment: West Clare Show and Louisburgh have several similarities, with both appearing on the show calendar around the same time a dozen years ago. Getting married in four days time did not deter Louisburgh’s secretary Louise Arthur from delivering a flawless set of results, even from rain-sodden results sheets, to this paper.