For many people who live or shop in Omagh today the shopping complex on the Sedan Avenue, the site of Argos, Marks and Spencers and the rest, is simply a commercial, retail shopping area. However, for many years the spot was the central location for much of the sporting, recreational and entertainment activity in the town. Its life as a stadium paralleled, roughly speaking the span of the former Town Hall, from the time of the first World War until the closing decade of the twentieth century. Before the Showgrounds site on Sedan Avenue came into its own a lot of social activity in the open air took place on grounds on the Dublin Road, near the present Super Valu car park and known as the Pleasure Gardens.
The Showgrounds by the 1920s was the venue for local soccer games, where teams such as the Wanderers, the Corinthians and Abbeyvale took part in games and competitions. In the early days the grounds were open to the gaze of pedestrians on the Sedan Avenue who could get a good view of the games without having to pay at the gate, if there was even a gate. To prevent this officials acquired mealbags from the neighbouring Scott's Mills, and sewed them together to create large screens which they would attach to poles to stop the free shows.
No-one could ever prevent people from congregating at the river-side wall in the Goal Square, where spectators could get a clear, if somewhat limited view of the action. In the days when the GAA prevented its members, not only from playing foreign games, but also attending them, broadminded Gaels would get a glimpse of the soccer action without technically infringing the rules of their organisation. An Irish solution to an Irish problem.
In the 1930s the Showgrounds was the venue for greyhound races, held on Tuesday and Thursday nights in the summer months. These races attracted large crowds, as well as track bookies, some of them dealing in small bets of threepence or sixpence, others catering for heavier investments. Some of the atmosphere of the period can be savoured in Brian Friel's short story 'The Fawn Pup'.
During World War II, there was less time for innocent merriment and the grounds were requisitioned for infantrymen of the United States armed forces, who lived in Nissen-type huts, most of the young soldiers coming from the great prairie states of the Middle West, and destined for North Africa, the beaches of Normandy and the battlefields of Europe. In the morning citizens of Omagh, as well as the military would be awakened in the mornings by a bugler sounding Reveille.
It is a curious paradox that 50 or 60 years ago, when the population of Omagh was about one-sixth of what it is today, there was a greater buzz about the town: at one time three picture houses, two or three dance halls, carnivals, pantomimes, processions and parades. The Showgrounds was a busy place in the post-war years. Circuses pitched their tents there - the Irish circuses, Duffy's and Fossett's came once a year and there were also what were billed as 'American' circuses. On the day that Britain went to Germany in September 1939 there was a German circus in the grounds. The local police advised them that it might be a good idea if the circus were to cross the Border. Which they did.
It was also the venue for travelling funfairs and amusements; chairplanes, hobby-horses, dodgem cars, and huge aerial contraptions which you would not want to go on to after a belly-full of porter. There were shooting galleries, crown-and-anchor tables, rickety-wheels and other devices designed to part fools from their money. The Showgrounds was also the stage for military tatoos, and the end-of-parade rallying point for political demonstrations, Orange and Green. On different days, you understand. For many years the Showgrounds was the venue for Omagh's renowned annual Agricultural Show, now moved to the new agrarian centre in on the road to Drumquin. Local teams played in soccer leagues for several decades after World War II and teams from locally-based military regiments would have present and future stars of the big English and Scottish Leagues here as National Servicemen. From 1953 to 1959 the famous Battisti Cup Knockout competition was staged and teams came from all over the North and Dublin and Sligo to compete. On one occasion in the 1960s the entire Glasgow Celtic first team took the field, under unlikely aliases and wearing funny masks, which could do nothing, of course, to disguise their skills.
The original site envisaged for the Omagh Leisure Complex was an area that would have included the Showgrounds, along with the CBS Park and St Patrick's Park. That all fell through. If the scheme had been realised most of the Showgrounds site would still be in green fields today.
In evidence the court heard that the police had to be called after a confrontation had erupted at a local hotel. An irate guest had complained about the quality of the breakfast which he had been offered, considering it meagre, and of poor quality, given the prices that the establishment were charging. All he was served was a pot of coffee and a croissant, which he felt was not fresh, and of a poor quality. "What he considered" said the RM, "As a very pedestrian croissasnt."
The British obsession with locking people up has resulted in prisoners on remand being confined in the cells of police barracks. An MP has discovered that, at a cost of £1,700 per night it would be cheaper to book each prisoner into a suite at the Ritz.
A recent Radio Ulster programme invited listeners to nominate their favourite towns or villages. One listener said that Strabane was quite an inhospitable place. This prompted a riposte from a lady, now domiciled in Ballybofey, that, on the contrary, Strabane was a 'wild friendly' place. Sometimes the word used as an intensifier is pronounced around here as 'wile'.
From a recent BBC radio quiz:
Q. On what part of the anatomy would a lobotomy be performed?
A. The bottom.
A correspondent for a right-wing German newspaper has told the BBC, "Tony Blair is much admired in my country. He is seen as the kind of tough, decisive leader we used to have."
Irish politicians may be interested in a conference entitled, 'Ethnics in Public LIfe'. It is being held in Las Vegas, Nevada.
