Ardfheis Sketch/Liam Reid:It should have been Brian Cowen's ardfheis, the one where he showed his true leadership potential - one of Fianna Fáil's "greatest sons", as John O'Donoghue put it on Saturday night.
Instead, his performance over the weekend was overshadowed by two of the party's more prodigal offspring, the late Liam Lawlor and Charlie Haughey.
From midday on Saturday the pair were in the minds of delegates at the Gleneagle hotel in Killarney.
Word of Liam Lawlor's death rippled through the crowd shortly after lunch, just as delegates were beginning to debate a motion sending best wishes to Mr Haughey. The crowd lapped up the motion, giving a standing ovation to its proposer, Brian Jordan, who whipped the crowd into a frenzy of Haughey nostalgia, culminating with a quote from Shakespeare that "we should not look upon his like again".
While the death of Liam Lawlor could not have been foreseen, the Haughey tribute was seen by some as a mistake.
While Bertie Ahern said he supported the motion, the standing ovation caused one Minister to wince. "Needless," he sighed, shaking his head.
Brian Cowen might otherwise have been the only talk of the weekend, as the backbone of the operation, giving substance to the high-tech razzmatazz that the Fianna Fáil ardfheis has become, more animated and active with the media than he has been since taking over at finance.
From setting up the weekend with a package of reforms to prevent against wasteful spending, to a robust defence of the Government's handling of the economy, he was leading his party's fight back.
The party was in traditional form, with the Taoiseach wrapping the tricolour around him - metaphorically - on Friday evening by announcing the restoration of the 1916 military parade, in a bid to reclaim some republican heritage from Sinn Féin.
Minister for Justice Michael McDowell would no doubt have been impressed by the security measures, with delegates having to pass through metal detectors to gain entrance to the conference hall and show passports to vote - not without considerable grumbling.
One supporter couldn't understand why he was not allowed take a large Stanley knife into the auditorium.
The party was also in revisionist mode, treating delegates to a short documentary on recent Irish economic and social history, as a warm up to the main speeches on Saturday night.
The rather selective view of the film was that all bad things that occurred in Ireland in the last 40 years occurred when Fine Gael and Labour were in government together, elegantly fast-forwarding through the 1977-1981 period when Fianna Fáil had full control of the country's finances.