Labour of love for a festival of fun

THOSE TRAVELLING from Dublin to next week's Punchestown three day festival should have a clearer run than might have been the case. The extensive road works that have turned Newlands Cross, on the city's outskirts, into something resembling the Ypres Salient may not have vanished, but at least there will be nobody cleaning the interminable lines of traffic cones.

"I couldn't believe it a couple of days ago," says Punchestown's manager, Charlie Murless. "They were out cone cleaning and traffic was reduced to one lane. One lane on the major route to what is one of the major sporting and social events of the year. Imagine what it would have been like."

An appalling vision of bad tempered, sweaty frustration comes to mind, hardly the perfect beginning to a three day bonanza that traditionally is better known for its good humoured determination to have a good time. It had Murless on the phone quicker than a chatty teenager.

Murless's spare frame has been semi permanently coiled over the phone in the last two months. Being the manager of a three day enterprise that will cost Punchestown £500,000 to stage, that will attract 50,000 people through the turnstiles and have £530,000 of prizemoney to fight for, the buck tends to stop rather often with him.

The Irish Cheltenham it has been called and as Edward Gillespie, manager of that Irish dream factory in the Cotswolds, will tell you, that means headaches for the harassed staff whose task it is to make sure the magnificent frivolity passes, off smoothly.

At this stage someone ringing to complain about this or that can mean taking our eye off the ball and the ball now is first and foremost the track," Murless says.

The magnificent spring sun might show the 530 acres of Kildare that constitutes Punchestown at its best, but each baking ray has meant an even greater draw on the nearby lake. For the last two weeks, three 5,000 gallon water tankers have been pulled by tractor around the course for 12 hours a day, spraying 150,000 gallons of tendon and leg preserving water on to the track.

"The aim has been to produce good going, with no sting in it, because the safety of the horses is paramount. I think we've achieved that," Murless says, pushing a stick gratifyingly deep into the ground.

Work on the track began last November when an 18 yard strip of ground on the hurdles circuit was railed off for the festival, free from the hammering it would have taken during the winter. Since the last meeting on the track, the course management staff, headed by Joe Pearse who is about to have his 25th and last festival, have been preparing the track for its biggest week of the year.

A month ago, the first signs of the huge infrastructure that accompanies the festival began to show. Over a dozen marquees have been erected to help cater for the increased demand for corporate hospitality. Fifteen hundred people as expected in the tented village. One of the largest is the Punchestown Pavilion, which, at £60 for admission and lunch, will host some of racing's great and good like P McManus, John Magnier and for the second year, movie legend Sean Connery. Entry to the festival pavillion will set you back £165 and a private chalet will cost £185.

To cater for the hordes Punchestown's normal staff of 15 will mushroom to 600 for the three days. An increased proportion of these will be security personal, the number of which will be almost doubled this year, partly due to the disaster of the Aintree Grand National.

"We actually met on the night of the abandoned National to insure that we would be prepared. It's highly unlikely that anything will happen, but we must be ready. Punchestown sinks or swims on the strength of these's three days. It's another headache but our security won't be anything like as obvious as Cheltenham's was," Murless says.

That will be a relief to many of the estimated 5,000 British visitors to the festival. Punchestown has been marketed by Bord Failte in Britain as Ireland's Cheltenham, but the event organisers don't see themselves as being in competition with the March bonanza. They deliberately emphasise the April festival's more laid back atmosphere.

The scale of Punchestown may not be quite at the Cheltenham, level, but its popularity has grown dramatically. So much so that the possibility of turning the festival" into a four day event is being considered. Such a move failed at Cheltenham, but the recent announcement of the £7 million development plan for Punchestown as an equestrian centre and racecourse means that the potential for expansion is there.

Once next week is over the bulldozers will move in and the only parts of the present course that will survive are the grandstand, the stable block and the weighroom.

We have to increase the potential here. We could easily burns ourselves out "if we don't we could become over dependant on the festival and if that became too popular we could end up letting our patrons down. It's always a fine balance between generating income and giving a good service," Murless says.

Irish racing has been thanking its lucky stars for some years now that its festivals have been notably successful in consistently finding that balance. A common thread through them all is a deep local desire for them to work. Punchestown is no different.

The schoolsin the Naas area are closed for the three days and even the banks are closed for business in the afternoons. "It really is a joint effort from all concerned. We're just a centre point for that effort," says Murless.

Providing nobody has a sudden urge to start scrubbing filth caked traffic cones, next week will provide a chance for everybody to, benefit.