Ellen Coyne
๐ค SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
Exactly.
And that scope for subjectivity, I suppose, is nearly where fesh fixing actually came from.
Fesh fixing.
I love the expression.
The credit for that, I think, goes to Joe Duffy.
I think he was the first one to roll it out and obviously stuck in the Irish vernacular instantly after that.
But it is because, as you say, if you're at the All-Irelands or you're at the Worlds, you're probably in the top 1% of dancers globally.
And if you're on that podium, you know, in the most competitive categories, it's probably the teenage girls, the girls that's in first, second and third place.
Most of the time, there's probably not that much between them.
And what seemed to happen with the germination of these allegations of cheating was that
The teachers nearly thought they were doing like political lobbying for their dancers.
They would come up to like, say, the Munster Championships and be like, well, this girl placed really well in the world's last year and she's really skilled and this went wrong for her last year.
So when they were texting the judges the night before a competition saying, I really think Siobhan deserves to be first.
they thought that they were doing something altruistic.
They thought, oh, if I feel like this system is rigged and other people are engaging in this, wouldn't I be like a very poor advocate for my dancers to not do it?
And that I think this is just my my view from writing the book.
I think that's the moral gray area that a lot of people found shelter in when they were engaging in this.
They didn't even they didn't even recognize it as cheating at all.
They thought that they were
they were doing the best that they could in a system that was imperfect.