Skibbereen’s Olympic rowers may have dominated the West Cork gold medal winning headlines of late but a world title also found its way to the region in August writes Tommy Moyles. Clonakilty’s Jer Coakley was one of two Irish ploughmen to win on the world stage in mid-August, on the reversible, at the World Ploughing Contest in Estonia.
A long with Eamonn Tracey from Carlow, who was crowned supreme world ploughing champion in the conventional class, Jer Coakley was paraded through Clonakilty, along with the National Ploughing Association’s Anna May and Anna Marie McHugh, to celebrate the win. There was a huge turnout to greet them, which caught Jer off-guard.
“I didn’t expect it at all, so it was a big surprise, and I’d like to thank all the people who turned out and those who helped along the way in the West Cork ploughing and national ploughing association. There was a huge turnout there to welcome us back.”
“I was grateful for the help at home too because we were away for two weeks in Estonia. I was part of a 25-person group that travelled out from Ireland and we had a good bit of the two weeks to practice ahead of the event.
There were little differences in the soil, like there were no stones there, but the basics were the same.”
Married to Mary, the couple have two young children, two-and-a-half-year-old Maggie and six-month-old Jerry. Jer’s mother is also home to help, as is his brother Kieran, and together they run a dry stock and tillage farm near Clonakilty. They also run a contracting business, mainly baling silage and reseeding and a small bit of slurry, spraying and cutting grain. The show was kept going while Jer was away competing.
Being in the contracting business, along with farming, means that Jer is all too familiar with how tricky a year it has been to get work done.
“It was a very slow start and it’s slow to finish now,, but if we had a fine week at the start of September, we’d be fine. It was very hard to plan anything and we often had to try and do a couple of days work in one day. You could only do the best you can and most farmers know that.
Jer won the reversible competition in his Ford tractor and a Kvernland plough, which were shipped out to Tartu, Estonia, for the event ,which took place from August 16-17.
He has been competing in ploughing at a national level since 2003 when he turned 16, and with the exception of when the event was cancelled due to Covid 19, Jer has competed at the national ploughing championships every year since. His love of ploughing started at home.
“My father was at it, so we fell in after that. There was plenty of practice involved. It’s not something you’d do overnight
“I’m 22 years at it at this stage, so there’s a lifetime of learning gone into it and I’m still learning. Even though I’m at the top now, I can see my own mistakes every day.”
Since 2008, Jer has competed in the reversible ploughing class, winning multiple national titles since then. He also won the European championships in the same discipline on three occasions over the years, ploughing in Scotland, Switzerland and Denmark. He ploughed at the World Championships in Croatia in 2012.
Jer has a short break to enjoy his victory but the defence of his world title begins all over again in a few weeks’ time at the National Ploughing Championships in Ratheniska, Co Laois.
“The competition here is nearly as tough as at the world championship to be honest,” he claims. “The guy who was second to me last year at the national finals won the world title the year before so we’re competing against the best here and that helps to keep the standard up.
Ireland have won the world title for the last three years in a row. The competition is so high here, you wouldn’t find it anywhere else in the world.”
