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A savage festival these days. I used to be down at it years ago, when Galway was a small town.
These days skies over the midlands resemble Iraq with all the choppers.
Does anybody here head to it?

To keep it GAA related...
Remember in 1998 before the first Clare game. John Troy was driving home from the Galway races at some ungodly hour and crashed his car.
Needed a good few stitches in his head and had to play the game wearing a helmet to keep them covered.

I'm heading down tomorrow.

i remember that in 98, the story going around was that joe and billy dooley beat the shite out of john troy in sid's pub one night after training. them stories were class!!

turk wrote:i remember that in 98, the story going around was that joe and billy dooley beat the shite out of john troy in sid's pub one night after training. them stories were class!!

Why did they allegedly beat up Troy?
Johnny Pilkington throwing his All Ireland medal at Garda Ollie Baker was another great porky of the time!

i'm not sure why

Bord na Mona man wrote:Why did they allegedly beat up Troy?

Why look for possible reasons; that could only diminish the myth. Stories like that are best left to the imagination for embellishment.

exactly biff!!

I don't know why they don't cancel the racing and just have the Galway drinking festival. That's all it is anyway. As it is due to my status as former PP employee I get plagued for "tips" every year. Then people get all glum when I say the best tip I can give is to bet low and save the money for beer - it's a bookies benefit that thing. They assume you know at least twenty winners and you're just not telling them out of badness.

And as for the crowds in Ballybrit - make you cry. Nothing worse than after doing your brains all day, trying to get out by having a monkey on the fav in the bumper with the only on course bookie who's 3/1 when everyone else is 5/2, and some yungwan in front of you in a big hat is deliberating where to put her fiver while the runner is bursting down trying to tell him to cut the price.

Or listening to some muppet in a suit pished on Heino complaining having lost fifty quid when you've just dropped a bar and you're saying nothing because that's what lads do.

And then you sleep on a floor.

Christ - give me Leopardstown in January any day.

I went down to it on the bus from ferbane.

I enjoyed the day greatly.

I didn't have any winning horses at all!

On the bus on the way back we diverted and stopped in some place in Roscommon, Brideswell it was. I had some of the nicest pints of my life there. I was delighted

Ba Humbug!

Lone Shark wrote:I don't know why they don't cancel the racing and just have the Galway drinking festival. That's all it is anyway. As it is due to my status as former PP employee I get plagued for "tips" every year. Then people get all glum when I say the best tip I can give is to bet low and save the money for beer - it's a bookies benefit that thing. They assume you know at least twenty winners and you're just not telling them out of badness.

And as for the crowds in Ballybrit - make you cry. Nothing worse than after doing your brains all day, trying to get out by having a monkey on the fav in the bumper with the only on course bookie who's 3/1 when everyone else is 5/2, and some yungwan in front of you in a big hat is deliberating where to put her fiver while the runner is bursting down trying to tell him to cut the price.

Or listening to some muppet in a suit pished on Heino complaining having lost fifty quid when you've just dropped a bar and you're saying nothing because that's what lads do.

And then you sleep on a floor.

Christ - give me Leopardstown in January any day.

The craic is good though!

I was down there on the Wednesday Galway Plate day this year and enjoyed it mightily. I meant to go on the Thursday as well but didn't make it.

I had no luck at all with the horses though when I was there although I made some of it back later in the week betting on the festival races from home!

Formwise I always find summer racing in the likes of Galway and Kilbeggan hard to figure out. Some of the races are such bad quality that the horses have no form at all and then there are the attempted plots & gambles where they're laid out to bring off a coup!

Like Lone Shark says it's a bookies benefit and punters beware! But great craic at the course and in the city!

Kilbeggan's a great evening out - but the racing's muck!!

and the bookies are tightfists, only offering 16-1 max on any horse - boo, you stink bookies!!

I actually quite like Kilbeggan - a large part of that is because I like National Hunt, so you don't get the worst of all worlds - the mixum gatherum card with 2 maiden hurdles, one handicap hurdle with 27 runners, one bumper, one maiden 2yo race, one 6F handicap and one 8F handicap - not a decent horse in sight.

listowel and tramore ... the 2 best meetings in the country!

feck galway!