Charolais cattle to blame for Banshees' Oscars failure

Agri watchers might have noticed something out of place on Inisherin Island.

Brendan Gleeson (left) and Colin Farrell in The Banshees Of Inisherin. Picture: PA Photo/Searchlight Pictures.

Now, far be it from me to find fault with the Banshees of Inisherin, for as ye all know by now, in my eyes it is the finest Irish film of all time.

Aside, that is, from The Field... Which is, of course, an Irish film of such quality and such monumental standing, that it cannot be quantified or measured up against anything ever produced by mere mortal man.

Yerra, The Field stands alone as a classic. It's the movie equivalent of the Ardagh Chalice.

But moving back to the Banshees of Inisherin... With the dust having settled on the Oscars, and the winners having cried their way home, the question remains, whatever happened to The Banshees of Inisherin?

Why didn't it win a fistful of Oscars?

Why didn't it win an Oscar for every finger severed in the mighty film?

Well, as always, I know the answer.

For, as with most things in life, you don't have to be a genius to figure it all out.

In spite of what some might say, or what we might like to believe, The Banshees of Inisherin is far from perfect.

And while in many ways it's mighty, in its depiction of rural Irish life back in the 1920s, a few inaccuracies were committed to film. Alas, this is true.

Chief amongst them was the depiction of island cattle - the herd Padraic happily marched onto the screen occasionally.

Straight away, to me at least, as I sat in the cinema chewing on my peanuts, I knew they looked all out of place.

Fine suckler stock of the Charolais persuasion. Perhaps a bit of Simmental too around the edges. But whatever way you looked at them, they were great stock. Padraic was the lucky man.

Cattle that are common place in Ireland today. Cattle that can be seen everywhere from here to Roscommon. Winning awards and claiming accolades, they are cattle I would be proud to call my own.

But cattle, alas, that in an Ireland of the 1920s were as rare as feathers on a goat.

The Charolais has only been in Ireland for the past 60 years. In farming terms, they are a recent addition to the herd.

So how in the name of all that's agricultural were they traipsing on a remote island off the coast of Ireland 100 years ago?

Did they arrive there from Mars or Disneyland, or someplace?

Did the Banshee herself conjure them up?

Now the Academy of motion pictures, I'm sure, are no fools when it comes to the ins and outs of Irish beef cattle and, clearly, members on the board spotted the glaring mistake.

They spotted the fine continental stock and sniggered at the fact.

The Irish Examiner's Farming team had begged me to keep quiet about it up to now, hoping the error might go unnoticed.

'Twas unfortunate, in a way, that a cattle dealer wasn't consulted before filming got underway and that a few Shorthorns or Herefords weren't used instead of the French-bred cattle.

For this job alone could have made all the difference between success and all out victory.

It could have been the key to convincing the judges, based probably in Beverly Hills, that the tale was sound.

As it stood, with the Charolais cow and her weanling calf, it may as well have been Macroom last Saturday afternoon. Banshee island me arse.

And it didn't matter after that how many fingers were severed or pints drunk.

With continental stock roaming around the island, the Banshee herself may as well have been using a mobile phone. The jig was up.