One Night In Millstreet: Film goes behind the scenes on the famous Collins-Eubank fight

With such a cast of colourful characters, not least the two fighters and Noel C Duggan, the documentary is set to be one of the highlights of Cork International Film Festival, writes Esther McCarthy

One Night in Millstreet: Steve Collins and Chris Eubank at a press conference before the fight. 

It was the fight that had everything - the seemingly unbeatable and larger-than-life champion, the Irish boxer with his eyes on the prize, the colourful Millstreet businessman with a vision for making it all happen, and some details so bizarre you couldn’t make them up.

Now filmmaker Andrew Gallimore brings audiences the inside story of how boxer Steve Collins dethroned one of boxing’s most dominant figures, Chris Eubank, by dreaming big, sheer determination and the involvement of mind coach Tony Quinn.

One Night In Millstreet recalls how the fight dramatically unfolded in front of a jubilant and noisy crowd at Millstreet’s Green Glens Arena on St Patrick’s Weekend 1995. Gallimore was there on the night and recalls it all vividly, travelling from his native Wales to Cork for the first time.

 “I was writing a television series on boxing at the time called Celtic Fists, looking at the tradition of boxing in Celtic countries. It was a six-part series and they didn’t have an ending,” he says. 

“I heard about this fight that Steve Collins was taking, and he’d started marketing himself as the Celtic Warrior. I thought: ‘This is too good to be true’.”

Green Glens Arena owner Noel C Duggan in 'One Night in Millstreet'

Gallimore managed to get himself a ticket for the fight, which was to unfold at the venue owned by Noel C Duggan, just two years after the businessman had successfully hosted the 1993 Eurovision Song Contest. Like many of the visiting fans used to urban fight venues, he didn’t reckon on the distance between Millstreet and Cork City.

“I took the Swansea-Cork ferry, got into Cork early on the Saturday morning of the fight. As promoter Barry Hearn mentions in the film itself, I thought Millstreet was on the outskirts of Cork! I thought I'd just stroll over to the arena, have a walk around, and found out that I wasn't anywhere near this venue. But I wasn't alone - you could see a lot of confused people with press passes walking around, wondering how the hell they were going to get to Millstreet.”

One Night in Millstreet will have its world premiere at Cork International Film Festival’s Irish gala on November 11. It will also screen at six venues across Cork City and county for CIFF’s Super Cine Saturday on November 25. The film is one of five nominees selected for the New Irish Feature award, supported by the Irish Examiner.

The colourful and entertaining sports documentary recalls in rich detail how Steve Collins dethroned Eubank following weeks of lively engagements and press conferences between the two.

In one of those, Collins - keen to play mind games with his dapper-dressing rival - turned up dressed in Irish country attire, complete with a Jaguar and a borrowed Irish Wolfhound. He spoke to the media only in Irish, leaving Eubank under no illusion he was up for the challenge.

Tony Quinn and Steve Collins

Famously, Collins teamed up with businessman and mind coach Tony Quinn, who contributes to the documentary and says that he knew little about boxing. We’re reminded of Collins’ claims that he’d been hypnotised by Quinn to win the high-stakes fight, and even conditioned to hear Donald Duck’s voice every time Eubank spoke.

Like the best sports movies, it’s not just about the boxing, but recalls how Collins’ victory came at a fascinating time in Irish life. The phrase ‘Celtic Tiger’ had been coined just a year before, and it felt like there was a ‘can-do’ attitude in the air in the lead-up to fight night, recalls Gallimore, who has lived here for over 26 years.

“There was a spirit of anything goes and I suppose Noel C Duggan encapsulated that, this concept that you can stage a world-title fight, whatever the technical problems in staging a live event on satellite television were, from Millstreet. Nobody seemed to take no for an answer - these were just problems to be overcome.

“Collins himself encapsulated that as well. I mean, he was a rank outsider for this fight. He was a substitute. He'd lost a couple of fights previously, Eubank had never been beaten. Eubank's next series of fights had already been arranged.

“The script was that Chris Eubank was supposed to win this fight. But you could just tell - the event was St. Patrick's Day weekend, the Cheltenham festival had just finished and it just built and built as an event really. In the end, by the time the place was packed in, I don't think anybody had any doubt who was going to win even before the opening bell, let alone the final bell.” 

Collins and Eubank, round 5 of their famous fight

As well as the key parties involved including Collins himself, Hearne, Duggan, Quinn and journalist Paul Howard, Eubank features in the film. An eternal showman, he is a funny and engaging interviewee, who gives kudos to Collins for his win.

Gallimore used an eye-directing technique which gives all of his subjects a more intense eyeline, as though they are looking down into the camera lens. “It was great fun, because he's quite an intimidating presence. For the warm-up questions, you could tell he just wanted to cut to the chase. I enjoyed the interview hugely. I have to say.” 

 For all its humour, the film also features some of the darker elements of boxing. We’re reminded how Collins was given his huge opportunity after Belfast fighter Ray Close had no choice but to stand down when a routine scan showed lesions on his brain. Eubank’s career had already been touched by dark incidents, including the life-changing injuries sustained by Michael Watson in their fight just four years earlier.

Only weeks before the Millstreet fight, a fight between Nigel Benn and American boxer Gerald McClellan led to McClellan being seriously injured.

“It would have been irresponsible, I think, to make a film which didn't touch upon that,” says Gallimore. “However irrational Eubank's reaction to the Tony Quinn story was, we wanted to explain that it was in Eubank's case perfectly understandable.”

 The filmmaker is looking forward to bringing his film to its world premiere in the place where the memorable night first unfolded almost three decades ago. “I was very pleased that the premiere was going to be in Cork. It just seemed a natural home for the film to start its life, it completes the circle.”

• One Night in Millstreet will have its world premiere at Cork International Film Festival on November 11. It will also screen at six venues across Cork City and county for CIFF’s Super Cine Saturday on November 25

 Films to watch out for:

Mean Streets.

• Foe (now in cinemas): Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal play a young married couple facing extraordinary circumstances in Garth Davis’s sci-fi thriller.
• Halloween at the Triskel (Tues, Oct 31): Horror fans in Cork will enjoy Triskel’s Wes Craven programme featuring The Hills Have Eyes, Scream, and A Nightmare on Elm Street.
• Mean Streets (cinemas, from November 5): Martin Scorsese’s classic gets a 50th anniversary return to cinemas.
• NYAD (cinemas, Netflix): This sports biopic starring Annette Bening gets a cinema run in advance of its Netflix debut.
• Pain Hustlers (Netflix from today): Emily Blunt and Chris Evans star in a crime thriller revolving around a racketeering scheme.