At the far end of a previously unassuming field, a triumphant cap to a truly historic run for Irish sport was achieved by one proud Castlerea man.

Sure, Pico Lopes marked Lionel Messi in a World Cup knockout match, 15 men from Mayo ended their county’s 75-year long All-Ireland curse and Kate O’Connor ran, threw and jumped her way to European gold.

But Shane Donlon, a father from Castlerea, Co Roscommon, chucked a welly so high and so far, he left the 2026 National Ploughing Championships in Screggan, Co Offaly, with one free T-shirt and bragging rights to last a lifetime. That, surely, earns him his place among the sporting greats on this island.

“I threw it the first time and I could feel a little tweak in the hamstring, so I said: ‘I’m not going to be ripping that with this craic’,” he told The Irish Times after achieving glory. He knew to recalculate: “the second one, I just took it easy and the third one, I said I’ll go for the sign’.”

And went for the sign he did – and, with it, the welly won him some new clobber. “I gave it welly at the Ploughing,” the logo on its front reads. His son, Eoghan, was there to see his old man’s crowning moment.

The Donlons said they wanted to make the most of their day at the Ploughing. “There’s so much to do here,” the father said, “You’d nearly want the two days if you wanted to see everything.”

Mikey Cully (7) and his sister Lillian (8) were also fierce competitors in the welly throw. When Mikey made his way to the line, his underarm technique was slightly overextended – and the adult-sized boot made its way directly (and rather quickly, as well) to his sister’s stomach.

Lillian was not totally convinced he did it by accident – “he would do that on purpose at home”, but she quickly laughed it off and the two were back to being friends before they could say “wellington boot”.

Among the over 1,700 stands across the 700-acre site, where 250,000 people are expected to visit this week, a small tent was causing big waves in the Irish fashion industry.

The queue to get in was out the door, maybe in part due to the male attendees’ reluctance to actually sit down. But walking up and down an elevated runway were models donning outfits from popular Irish designers.

“There’s a lot of local boutiques, which is nice to see because it’s the last year it’s going to be here, s I was kind of surprised at that. It’s nice to see that at the Ploughing,” said Laura Kelly, who made it to the Screggan field before 2pm having just finished working at a nearby school.

With her mother, Sandra, she came to the Ploughing as her brother is performing at several of the music tents as a member of the popular folk-traditional fusion band, Ruaile Buaile.

On the fashion sense of the 80,000 or so people who joined her at the agri-convention: “Jerseys and wellies, I think, are the way to go here. But there are some people with a nice country chic” style, she said.

On the other side of the site – only a few hundred metres away, but with a strict grid in place to shepherd the thousands around it all, it takes about 20 minutes to get there – some have swapped country chic with artificial intelligence.

At the Engineers Ireland stand, two robots (one humanoid, one dog-like) command the attention of their audiences with their every automated move.

“Farming has always been very good at taking up technology, it’s just slow to take up new technology,” Keelan Keoghan, the organisation’s policy officer who programmed the robo-dog, said.

“Eventually, robotics and drones will be used in farming, it’s just a matter of time.”