The show that wasn’t
IF 2020 was a normal year we would now be reviewing the 41st Charleville Agricultural Show, which was to have taken place last weekend. However, the two-day event was cancelled back in April thus delaying the start of the fifth decade of the show, which is the only two-day show in the country.
In what should have been a weekend of frenetic activity for the farming community, trade stand holders, sole business operators and community groups, vintage vehicle owners and amusement proprietors, and marquee hiring companies and security personnel and the army of stewards, the showgrounds at the Pike Cross, Ballyhea, Charleville were silent and deserted.
And so, the Show committee members are now looking to 2021 to stage an event that they hope will make up the revenue they have lost by the cancellation of their annual event.
But this is not the first time that the show had to be abandoned as the same situation befell them in 2000 when the foot and mouth disease outbreak prevented the show from being staged also that year, and the show bounced back from that disappointment.
The expectation is that there will be a similar return to normality in the present circumstances, that is assuming that the virus will be adequately controlled by the introduction of a vaccine, or sufficiently controlled to again allow social integration safely on a national basis.