Ellen Coyne

It made the whole story sound a little bit more salacious, but it kind of missed the point in that the point was you have this little network where a relatively small group of people know each other very well.

They've nursed rivalries and alliances with each other over the decades.

They take turns judging and teaching.

So if you had a teacher you were friendly with and you were judging their kids, you would look after them on the understanding that when the role was reversed, when that other person was judging yours, they would return the favour.

And all of this was just inherently contributing to this idea that Irish dancing is inherently unfair.

And when I was researching the book, I actually went back to like the 19th and 20th century.

And this was not new.

People had been like getting into fisticuffs at feshes in the 19th century over who they thought the rightful winner is.

So I'm not sure what it is about this sport, but people genuinely seem to have been fighting about Irish dancing for as long as they've been doing it.

But is there another element to this that the competitions are largely between children and maybe you have their parents or guardians acting on their own desires and ambitions, putting an enormous amount of pressure on the children?

Yes, and I don't want to be gendered in my remarks, but the people that I was often most afraid of when I was covering the story were the dance moms, because they would be quite vocal if they felt that I got something wrong.

I remember I went on primetime one night and used the word pageantry to describe the hair and the makeup.

Never made that mistake ever again after the feedback I got from some of those ladies.

But you're correct.

I saw a very nasty side of Irish dancing.

Unfortunately, I'm not saying it's representative of it, but...

Parents who would spend their evenings sitting on social media abusing other 14-year-old girls online because they happen to be rivals with their daughters.

Obviously, that pressure that tends to come, and unfortunately, I did see it sometimes in maybe the more American market where people are vicariously living out their dreams through their children.

The guilt that comes with being a child and knowing that your family might have remortgaged or sank the family savings into

getting you through this incredibly, incredibly expensive sport.