Home What's On WATCH: The reason one of the LaoisToday team WON’T be going Ploughing

WATCH: The reason one of the LaoisToday team WON’T be going Ploughing

There will be no Ploughing for Alan after his escapade last year
There will be no Ploughing for Alan after his escapade last year

The National Ploughing Championships are now in full swing but this scribe won’t be in attendance.

Last year, when I was still working with the Irish Sun, I was sent down to Screggan to cover the event.

Now despite living in Laois all of my life, this was actually the first time I had been at the Ploughing.

My Dublin colleagues chose me to go because I was one of the ‘culchies’ in the office – but they were completely in the dark about my actual lack of farming knowledge.

So, blissfully unaware of almost all things agricultural, I headed off to Tullamore for Day 1 of the Ploughing Championships.

In fairness, I was more than ready to roll up my sleeves and get my hands nice and dirty.

So with that in mind, I headed over to the sheep-shearing enclosure to tackle my first ever furry creature.

Sheep are believed to be gentle, docile creatures — but I found out that when you come at them with a giant razor they become a different animal altogether.

After some initial reluctance, I started to get the hang of the hair-cutting craic, mainly thanks to the patience of George Graham from Graham Shearing Contractors.

But just when I had almost finished taking off my sheep’s locks, he wriggled free of my grasp and proceeded to run across the stage as I hung off the back of him — much to the amusement of the crowd who had gathered to watch the show.

Such was the embarrassment, that I simply couldn’t go back there again.

And if you scroll the below video on to 9.00, you can see the moment it all went horribly wrong for yourself: