THERE was a world of difference between Saturday's rugby international and yesterday's National Butchers Awards, but a fundamental truth applied in both events blood and guts will only get you so far; it is how you finish that really counts.
Fortunately, there were no French butchers performing at Dublin's Davenport Hotel yesterday, so it was only Irish pork that got stuffed as the nation's finest victuallers gathered to slug it out.
As in all the best competitions, it was a game of two halves. On one side of the hall, four contenders for the Young Butcher of the Year Award had 2 1/2 hours to turn a side of lamb, half a hind quarter of beef and a leg of pork into a window display.
On the other side, four teams of judges had a similar period to eat their way along banquet sized tables of sausages, burgers, and black and white puddings. At least one judge doubled up in both the sausage and black pudding competitions, and presumably now has cholesterol levels you could measure with a Geiger counter.
The secretary of the Irish Master Butchers Federation, Mr Peter Corrigan, was on hand to interpret some of the technical points to the uninitiated.
"Linkage," he explained, when asked why sausage judges held each cluster up in the air. A good bunch of sausages, like a pack of rugby forwards, has to hang together well. But they also have to be uniform in size: if you are looking for awards, there is no room for a Paddy Johns and a Denis McBride in the same bunch of sausages.
Why was there no rasher competition, Peter was asked. He smiled at the innocence of the question. "Ah, no. You couldn't have that. Rashers would be far too intricate to judge. There's just too many different kinds."
This year's competition is the first to have taken place in the shadow of BSE, but the federation remains sanguine. "There were, about 10 of our members that we know of who had to close, out of a total of 900. It did affect us, but consumer confidence is returning.
In keeping with the tradition of the Ulster fry, Northerners dominated yesterday's competitions, including the young butcher award which went to Belfast's David Cheung. Best sausage: Mallon & Sons, Monaghan; special sausage award: McCartney; Meats, Moira, Co Down; best burger: Pat Doherty, Enniskillen; best white pudding: Olhausen's, Omni Shopping Centre, Santry, Dublin; best black pudding: Kevin Commins, Ardee, Co Louth.
