CHRISTMAS came early for Irish agricultural shows after the Minister for Rural and Community Affairs, Michael Ring delivered a vital €812,000 investment package and the benefits of that, plus the summer heatwave, resulted in an upbeat show season.

Ring, who launched the Irish Shows Association (ISA) yearbook in April, also extended that lifeline with the news in August of a further €600,000 package for 2019.

The May Bank Holiday weekend fixtures of Newmarket-on-Fergus and Thomastown and Ballinasloe, back on the calendar again, bookended the 2018 agricultural show season. Slotted in between were Balmoral, Dublin, Clifden and the Horse of the Year Show, where Irish-breds were in the spotlight again.

Several stallions recorded first-time Dublin championship wins by their progeny, including Emperor Augustus (Patrice Dorney’s supreme hunter champion Somerville), Island Commander (young horse champion, Greenhall Treasure Island), Obelix (Louise Lyons and Paulette Cooper’s working hunter champion, First Rate) and Munther (with Yvonne Pearson’s Coote Cup broodmare champion, Kief Queen B).

It was a similar story with the foals in The Irish Field Breeders Championship when western exhibitors took champion and reserve places this year; Michael Egan and Danielle Cusack with a Clonaslee Captain Cristo colt and the McInerney family with a Tyson filly.

Munther also produced the top three foals in the thoroughbred-sired class at Dublin, including the winner, P.J Lehane’s P.J’s One, who went on to win the All Ireland filly foal final at Moate.

Glencarrig Knight had a successful Clifden too, producing winners including Katie Curran’s junior champion Glencarrig Princess Katie; Patrick Kearns repeated his 2017 foal championship win with a win by full-sister Brocklodge Emma; Charlie and Owen Hughes’s owned Lankill Lad was the ridden champion and Declan Flynn’s stallion Slackport Prince won the supreme in-hand title.

Robbie Fallon’s disrupted travel plans didn’t deter him from seeing his home-bred Cashelbay Rocket win the ridden Connemara class with Michael Harty at HOYS, where the Sean Jones-bred Viewpoint successfully defended his HOYS ridden hunter crown with a back-to-back win.

Neither the Croker Cup or All Ireland Irish Draught stallion final were held for a third year, due to lack of entries. However, Sean Barker’s Gortfree Hero had a treble in the Irish Draught stallion class at Dublin where his son Gortfree Lakeside Lad won the Draught performance championship. The same stallion was also awarded the Horse Sport Ireland (HSI) breeders award for the second successive year.

The HSI awards made a fitting move to the recent Breeders Conference in Kildare, where the other showing award recipients were Eddie Murphy for his Irish Draught mare, Holycross Grace, by Holycross. Making a welcome return was the sport horse mare category, won by another prolific homebred winner in PJ Lehane’s PJ’s Delight, by Lux Z, while Michael Hughes picked up yet another award with his Lifetime Achievement accolade.

HSI also ramped up the prize money for their young handlers final, hosted at the National Ploughing Championships in September, when Lorcan Glynn and Katie Dineen won the senior and junior categories.

Small number of entries, particularly in young horse classes, buyers finding it hard to buy correct types and the quest to attract young blood amongst committees, exhibitors and judging panels continue to be issues. Expect to see committees switch dates and days in the effort to attract footfall to shows.

2018 was the year we bade farewell to great Irish Draught supporters Chantal Deon and Paddy Dunning; judges Des Barnwell, Gerry Judge and Countess April Merveldt; Colm Costello, the keen Connemara exhibitor from Leitrim; Mary Quirke, who showed broodmares and foals with her father, the Littleton stallion master Paddy, another Connemara enthusiast, Henry Kelly passed away in October and then most recently two RDS stalwarts in Harold McGahern and Mrs Laidlaw.

The greatest equine loss to the show world was Kings Master. It would be easier to list the All Ireland and RDS titles his progeny haven’t won and the titles continued in 2018 with his lovely Ballarin My Lady winning the Dublin hunter mare championship for Nicola Perrin.

Michael Hughes retired as the ISA national secretary at its AGM, hosted in Newry in November where ISA president David Sheehan strongly rebuked exhibitors who abused judges and fellow exhibitors.

Jim Harrison, Hughes’s successor, is on a mission to involve more young people on show committees and has urged shows to add at least two new committee members in 2019. Enlarging the panel of ISA All Ireland final judges and judges confining themselves to half-a-dozen judging engagements each year were suggestions from the floor at the AGM and perhaps with a series of roadshows planned by the Irish Horse Board and the Traditional Irish Horse Association in the springtime, a thinktank on the future of showing for exhibitors and show personnel would be a similar good move.

Cian Cusack and Jordan Murphy shared the overall points winner title at the IPS awards where Tara Hudson’s Chagford Leon was also announced as the year’s champion pony.

High-speed internet, especially for Dublin online entries and an app, that would magically produce full results with breeding details each week, are high on some wish lists for 2019.

HIGHLIGHTS

Dessie’s Double: The Princess Royal presented Dessie Gibson with the silverware for his third Balmoral young horse title, a feat he repeated in Dublin. Undeterred by a kick from a passing pony at a pre-Dublin show, he still went on to record a Laidlaw champion and reserve double with Greenhall Treasure Island and Aidensfield Candy Boy. The ‘made of steel’ Dromara man ended Horse Show week as its leading showing exhibitor.

Derry’s Double: Not only did he breed Gibson’s Laidlaw Cup champion, Greenhall Treasure Island, Derry Rothwell also won the All Ireland colt foal final at the superb Clarecastle Show with another home-bred, Greenhall Irish Man.

Best Buy: P.J Lehane’s P.J’s One was the top prize money-earning foal this year for breeder P.J Lehane, who sold her earlier in the show year to neighbour and right-hand man Niall O’Donovan.

All Worth It In The End: With Shannon and Cork airports closed with air traffic control glitches, it took a cross-country dash to Dublin instead for Robbie and Barbara Fallon to make their flight to Birmingham. It was worth it when the home-bred Cashelbay Rocket and Michael Harty won at the Horse of the Year Show.

That Gallop: It usually takes a pole down in the Aga Khan to cause such a gasp but the gallop produced by hunter mare champion Ballarin My Lady, with Nicola Perrin on board, during their lap of honour was another Dublin highlight.

The Icon: “I have made wonderful friends in every corner of Ireland,” said Michael Hughes at the end of his 20-year term at ISA regional and national level.