The Galway Races
- Bord na Mona man
- All Star
- Posts: 4049
- Joined: Fri Nov 05, 2004 11:34 am
- Club: Clara
The Galway Races
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.
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.
- Bord na Mona man
- All Star
- Posts: 4049
- Joined: Fri Nov 05, 2004 11:34 am
- Club: Clara
Why did they allegedly beat up Troy?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!!
Johnny Pilkington throwing his All Ireland medal at Garda Ollie Baker was another great porky of the time!
- Lone Shark
- All Star
- Posts: 5378
- Joined: Fri Oct 29, 2004 5:21 pm
- Club: Ferbane
- Location: Roscommon
- Contact:
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.
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.
- Bord na Mona man
- All Star
- Posts: 4049
- Joined: Fri Nov 05, 2004 11:34 am
- Club: Clara
The craic is good though!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.
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!
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!
- Lone Shark
- All Star
- Posts: 5378
- Joined: Fri Oct 29, 2004 5:21 pm
- Club: Ferbane
- Location: Roscommon
- Contact:
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.
-
- Junior B
- Posts: 15
- Joined: Fri Sep 23, 2005 5:19 am
- Location: Australasia ... but you'll never know next week
- Contact: