International Spud Festival 2016

The coveted chippy cups

s each year passes, those humble yet, in their own way, towering cups become ever more coveted…

Yes, they come from all four corners of the globe, all with hope in their hearts and potatoes in their pockets, for the one, and hopefully only, International Spud Festival.

Now in its sixth year, the contestants once again gathered at the Horse & Hound in Delgany, with supporters on hand and potato sacks on their backs.

Robert Benson, the 2015 champion, came with his Diseree. The 2014 champion and 2015 runner-up, Monty Hunter, had his Delgany Delicious on display, whilst Angela Crockford – whose daughter, Lucy, won in 2014 – was showing everyone her British Queens. Catching everyone by surprise, George Ryan had British Queens too, whilst Una Moloney was ready to impress the judges with her Golden Wonder and Ann Marie Dolan simply whipped out her Checkers.

The great Paula Hanrahan assembled Team PoPo to help her show off her Irish Cobblers, whilst Billy Wildes went all exotic with his Red Sheikh whilst both Martina Breen happily took out her British Queens and Roderick Jones invited everyone to try his Kidney Spuds.

Whose name will be engraved alongside Gunter Starke (Germany 2011), Robin Snee (GB 2012), Gordon Hunter (Ireland 2013), Lucy Crockford (Ireland 2014) and Robert Benson (Ireland 2015)?

As the judges retired to their special Adjudicating & Inebriating room, the anticipation mounted. Then it waned a little. Then Caroline from the Horse & Hound went to get changed. And then the anticipation mounted a little bit again. Especially when your man off the telly showed up to call out the winners…

Father Dougal would have loved it…

You can check out the full 2016 gallery here, last year’s competition here, and jump back even further here.

Catch all the fun of last year’s competition right here.