Ellen Coyne

It's just very unique compared to any other form of dancing.

And people love it so much, it's kind of impossible to extricate yourself, particularly if your child has fallen in love with it.

The second thing that's kind of the weird nuance about fesh fixing is that some people didn't even think that what they were doing was really cheating.

They thought it was more like political lobbying.

That when you come into the Oscar season, the way people kind of campaign for themselves to win an award, they thought you would go into the All-Irelands and the Worlds and be like, this girl did place at the Worlds last year, but she should have been higher.

And I think she kind of deserves this.

So that was kind of how people justified it in their mind.

And people thought, well, if everyone else is doing this, like, wouldn't I be a moron to not do it as well?

There's some people who swore they never did it, but everyone said that they were aware of it.

Well, unfortunately, it never got that far.

So they set up disciplinary hearings into the 44, but it dragged on and dragged on.

And long story short, eventually it all disintegrated because the Irish dance body couldn't get a key witness to come forward.

What happened there was the people who had been accused were furious because they felt that they never got their day in court, if you want to use that phrase, to vindicate themselves or to say that they didn't know what they were accused of or this proof wasn't enough or these screenshots should have been doctored.

On the other side of it, you had people who felt that this was going to be like a big vindicating cleansing moment for Irish dancing.

And that never kind of materialised, that they never got the sanctions or like the verdicts again.

Some rules were brought in after the Fesh Fixing scandal emerged to effectively make it harder for someone that would try to cheat.

So it's much tougher on judges.

They don't know what category they'll be judging until the last possible moment.

They don't get the dance numbers in advance.

However, I think by 2025, when you got to the World Championships, that almost couldn't be put on because this cheating scandal had cost Irish dancing so much financially and reputationally.