Former Kerry GAA star, Tommy Walsh, now playing in Australia for the Sydney Swans, writes about his memories of the Rose festival and says the Tralee people should never take it for granted…

MY earliest memory of the Festival is watching the parade.

My father had – and still has – offices on the corner of Ashe Street/Castle Street so myself, my sister and brothers would stick our heads out the window and start roaring down at them to try and get them to wave up at us.

We had a great view of the whole thing with the colour of the floats, the crowds and the bright lights. As a young fella you wouldn’t be used to the crowds, so you’d be walking around after looking at all the stalls and the various events so it was all a fantastic  novelty at that time.

I always looked forward to the Festival because it was the last bit of fun you’d have before going back to school after the summer. Once the festival was over, the dread of going back would set in!

We went to as many things as we could; the parades, the circus and the ‘bazaar’ of course.

Later on, when I was around 14, I worked at the camp site at the Kerins O’Rahilly’s club. I missed it when it was at its peak, but there’d still be a good few tents up. People would tell me about the heyday of the site when a bus would go back and forth from the station – to bring the campers down – and the place would be full.

We used to open up a chipper out the back for the campers and late at night you’d see a few things!

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I guess a few other festivals up the country came along in the 1990s which took away the crowds, but I think it has been invigorated in the past number of years and it’s great to see that.

As an adult, the football would have taken over during mid-August. I was involved with Kerry as a minor and then as a senior and we’d be either be playing in semi-finals that weekend or preparing for one the following Sunday, so I wouldn’t have been able to fully ‘enjoy’ the festival shall we say.

But I still used to get out, walk around the town and get involved in the atmosphere about the place. It was great to see the town full and people supporting it. I guess it’s a bit like Christmas because a lot of people abroad or up the country would take their holidays around that time and there’d be great get-togethers over the week.

This will be my fifth year missing the festival and I really miss the buzz around the place. It’s definitely one of the biggest things I miss being over here in Sydney.

It’s massive over here among the Irish community and it showed when I went to the Sydney Rose Selection earlier this year. It was brilliant.

It was so well organised and the tickets were impossible to get such was the interest. All the contestants were so aware of their Irish heritage and I was really impressed with the professionalism of the whole event.

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You don’t know how special something is until you’ve been away from it and it’s definitely the case with the Rose.

I’d love to be back there, so I’d say to everyone in Tralee to embrace it while it’s there and never take it for granted. If you’re from Tralee you should get involved as much as you can, because the more people you can bring into the town, the more successful it’s going to be.

Show everyone who visits what a great town we have.