Full house for Laois cow dung bingo!
An expectant moment in Castletown. Photo: Stan Henderson
THERE was great anticipation at Castletown sports field, when ticket holders for 935 equally-sectioned squares waited for local calf Dumpy to drop the dump that would make someone €1,000 richer.
Locals watched from the sidelines while having plenty of craic and banter, as Dumpy was brought into the centre of the field in a cow trailer on Sunday 10 August. He was let out to wander the field and choose his square to dump in
The cow dung bingo fundraiser began during the Castletown summer festival in late June, which saw big crowds gather on the village green for a huge range of activities. Castletown community sports field committee, who organised the cow dung bingo, had a stall on the green that sunny Sunday where they sold tickets for €10 each or six for €50. This fun idea took legs and ticket sales continued for several more weeks.
A list of squares and names of ticket holders for each one was on display at the clubhouse for everyone to see and a time limit of two hours had been set for Dumpy to reveal the winner. If Dumpy had not dumped onto one of the squares inside that time, then the winner would be decided through a raffle drum onsite to pick a further ten winners to win €100 each.
In just under one hour, Dumpy finally dropped a dump into square number E14, which was owned by Fint Lalor from Trumera, making the absent ticket holder the winner of the €1,000 prize.
Local man Brendan Peters, who owns De Barbers in Portlaoise, is chairman of the Castletown community sports field committee.
He said: “As a fundraiser, we decided to run the cow dung bingo. It has been done in a few other places around the country, but it's novel here. In our small community, we sold 935 tickets for the squares and everyone supported us. The same people support everything all the time ‒ it’s a brilliant community. The fundraiser was to pay off the rest of a loan for the astro pitch and we achieved that, so we’ll have funds left to start other bits and pieces.”
Brendan wants to thank the committee for all their hard work and everyone who supported the fundraiser. He said: “There’s a lot of hard work that goes on in the background that nobody sees ‒ we have a great team.”
After Dumpy had chosen the winning square, he was ‘relieved’ of his duties and brought back to his nearby farm. The ten winners of €100 each were picked from the raffle drum by local children, including Dumpy’s owner Tomás Ferns, who picked the last two names from the drum.
Those winners were Gearóid Kirwan, John Finlay, Luke Devitt, Trish Carroll, Dan Guilfoyle, Mary Peelo, the Delaney family from Knockbrack, Bill Davis, Breege Walsh and Lisa Dooley from Butterisland.
