Donegal Rally 2021

Pique

No rally. Yet the rednecks descend upon the town and we are subjected to their **** boxes bouncing off the rev limiter all night.

Why was no statement issued months ago to stay away?

Why are their cars not seized and let them get the bus back to wherever they come from and pay impound fees to release the car in a month?

Pain in the a$$.

Donegal Storm

Didn't even realise it was rally weekend until I was driving up by the Clanree earlier and saw some of the unmistakable 'clientele' stumbling around drinking at the side of the dual carriageway.

Not hard to know now with the constant sound of revving and exhausts all night

Pique

Some of them have either got Kalashnikovs or else have their ecu mapped to make the car backfire like one.

Oh how I wish I had a Reaper drone with a bunch of missiles.

I say this as a man who loves cars and has owned fast Subarus, BMWs and the like in the past. But to hell with this "culture".

Cee-Jay-Cee

Came out of town about an hour ago, it’s mental! I think there are more around this year than on years when the actual rally was running! Anyway I’m glad I live out of the town, I’ll be avoiding it till Monday.

Donegal Storm

Seems worse than ever today, constant revving and backfiring all day and Garda sirens every few minutes.

Chatting to a neighbor earlier who works with the Tidy Towns committee and he was saying all the plants and flowerpots they'd planted along the Main Street were smashed overnight

donegal_man

Had occasion to be in Letterkenny earlier today and the noise level from idiots revving and backfiring is ridiculous. Combined with the number of people shouting and screaming for no apparent reason I'd dread to be living anywhere along the Main Street or Pearse Road this weekend.
Disappointed by the lack of any visible Garda presence on the streets as well.

Nollog

donegal_man wrote: »

I'd dread to be living anywhere along the Main Street or Pearse Road this weekend.
Disappointed by the lack of any visible Garda presence on the streets as well.

Irish water will be filling the noise gap from 11pm to 3am from the Monday down there too, it'll be a hard week for that stretch of road.

Arrests will be way down, because they're not being arrested.

"Local businesses need the money" which is why a lot of them have had to close early the past two days since it started.

Pique

Complete and utter lack of garda presence as far as I could tell today.

CRI0ST0IR

Wait I thought the year was 2021?

Pique

CRI0ST0IR wrote: »

Wait I thought the year was 2021?

Fat fingers and now I can't change it.

muffler

CRI0ST0IR wrote: »

Wait I thought the year was 2021?

It is

CRI0ST0IR

muffler wrote: »

It is

Checkmate.

Cherry Blossom

I came out the dual carriageway half an hour ago. They had five or six modified cars pulled over at the manor roundabout. It seemed they were inspecting them to see if they meet standards.

CRI0ST0IR

Didn't even know the rally was this weekend until I went on to social media and seen all the "full time legends" showing off their rust buckets that sound like a lawnmower being pulled backwards over broken glass.

alchemist33

The congestion is probably the worst I've ever seen. I presume that with them not able to get into the pubs they've spilled out onto the streets (Main St is mental) and the car parks.
It looks like the Gardai were totally unprepared. Normally there are plenty about but only saw a pair today.

Cee-Jay-Cee

Pique wrote: »

Complete and utter lack of garda presence as far as I could tell today.

Was in town around 9 o clock and plenty of guards about the town, seen at least 6 patrol cars and 2 bikes and that was just along Pearse road.

boombang

Really disappointed to read about the damage to flowers on the main street. I hope that's unconnected.

If it wasn't for that I would have thought this was mostly relatively harmless fun. Though I might think differently if they were passing the house.

I like my cars, but I am amazed how knackered Altezzas still have such a draw for some young men.

Cherry Blossom

Cee-Jay-Cee wrote: »

Was in town around 9 o clock and plenty of guards about the town, seen at least 6 patrol cars and 2 bikes and that was just along Pearse road.

I just came back into the town and there and there are droves of people standing out in the road drinking between the Dry arch and pole star roundabouts. Cars parked all along the footpath there too. People hanging out of car windows with bottles in their hands. Queue of cars trying to get in to the Applegreen. Didn’t see one guard on my way back in. I like my cars too but I don’t remember the rally crowd being this anti-social back in the day. It used to be all dads with their kids following the rally when I was growing up. Even in my twenties the crowds were relatively well behaved. I suppose most of this crowd had booked accommodation already and came anyway. There are a lot of NI reg plates as far as I noticed. They are all fairly young too, not old enough to be fully vaccinated yet and there is no such thing as social distancing or wearing masks.

boombang

Jeez, the lads are still making loads of noise. Allow me to take back what I said about harmless fun.

Donegal Storm

I had to slam on my breaks going around the Oatfield Roundabout earlier after some idiot in a boy racer car decided to speed out in front of me when I was already on the roundabout. Beeped my horn and in return I got shown the finger and had a bottle of beer thrown out the window towards me.

I always make a point of not being in the town for rally weekend so not sure where this ranks in terms of annoyance and anti-social behaviour compared to other years but the town has essentially been a no-go zone all day

JoannieG

Cherry Blossom wrote: »

I I like my cars too but I don’t remember the rally crowd being this anti-social back in the day. It used to be all dads with their kids following the rally when I was growing up. Even in my twenties the crowds were relatively well behaved.

This is NOT the "rally crowd"! They probably won't recognise a rally car if it hit them! Although I've stepped back from rallying now, I spent the guts of 30 years competing in, and organising rallies and rally championships. In that time. I have rarely, if ever, seen someone from the "rally crowd" behave in the manner that the people who came to Letterkenny this weekend behaved. There is no word bad enough to describe them and their antics. Rally enthusiasts are still the dad's (and mums) that you remember. This element have nothing to do with rallying - there was no rally on this weekend, nor is there a rally in Salthill, or Killarney on the days they appear there. Please do not tar us all with the same brush.

Nollog

JoannieG wrote: »

This is NOT the "rally crowd"! They probably won't recognise a rally car if it hit them! Although I've stepped back from rallying now, I spent the guts of 30 years competing in, and organising rallies and rally championships. In that time. I have rarely, if ever, seen someone from the "rally crowd" behave in the manner that the people who came to Letterkenny this weekend behaved. There is no word bad enough to describe them and their antics. Rally enthusiasts are still the dad's (and mums) that you remember. This element have nothing to do with rallying - there was no rally on this weekend, nor is there a rally in Salthill, or Killarney on the days they appear there. Please do not tar us all with the same brush.

Even if you don't want to admit it, these are the people rallies always bring into towns.

JoannieG

/\/ollog wrote: »

Even if you don't want to admit it, these are the people rallies always bring into towns.

But, there's no rally on this weekend. That's my point. They will come, rally or not. They pick a place and decide to go there. I've been to hundreds of rallies over the years and these people do not appear at 95% of them.

There was no rally on in Cork when this happened https://www.thejournal.ie/boy-racers-cork-social-distancing-5093650-May2020/, or this https://www.thesun.ie/news/6308439/cork-car-meet-social-distancing-disgraceful-gathering-little-island/, nor in Clondalkin (there's never been a rally in Clondalkin) https://www.irishtimes.com/news/boy-racer-gathering-broken-up-by-garda-1.666350, or in Salthill https://www.joe.ie/news/gardai-put-policing-plan-place-boy-racers-cause-traffic-chaos-salthill-sunday-722707. I could go on.

Nollog

JoannieG wrote: »

But, there's no rally on this weekend. That's my point. They will come, rally or not. They pick a place and decide to go there. I've been to hundreds of rallies over the years and these people do not appear at 95% of them.

There was no rally on in Cork when this happened https://www.thejournal.ie/boy-racers-cork-social-distancing-5093650-May2020/, or this https://www.thesun.ie/news/6308439/cork-car-meet-social-distancing-disgraceful-gathering-little-island/, nor in Clondalkin (there's never been a rally in Clondalkin) https://www.irishtimes.com/news/boy-racer-gathering-broken-up-by-garda-1.666350, or in Salthill https://www.joe.ie/news/gardai-put-policing-plan-place-boy-racers-cause-traffic-chaos-salthill-sunday-722707. I could go on.

There are more this year, but as a child I was brought to rallies despite having no interest in cars beyond the shiny paint jobs, there were always these types there, just that the "adults" kept them more under check.

Pique

Port Road was blocked off last night at the dry arch so they could run drag racing!!

No cops. There needs to be a serious discussion on this and the cops lack of presence.

CRI0ST0IR

This is not the rally crowd. These people wouldn't know the first thing about rallying. It's just youths where they will pick a location nearly every weekend for a "Cruise" with a car full of 5 teeny boppers, listening to just dance 4, whilst holding the same warm bottle of beer in their hand for about 3 hours till they atleast lap the town twice...

Cherry Blossom

CRI0ST0IR wrote: »

This is not the rally crowd. These people wouldn't know the first thing about rallying. It's just youths where they will pick a location nearly every weekend for a "Cruise" with a car full of 5 teeny boppers, listening to just dance 4, whilst holding the same warm bottle of beer in their hand for about 3 hours till they atleast lap the town twice...

Maybe so, but they did not pick this location, this weekend at random. They did so because it would have been rally weekend were it not for COVID. I will bet also that they had accommodation booked well in advance of the knowledge that the rally would not take place.

Sunny Dayz

It's so disappointing to read what has gone on in Letterkenny at the weekend. As other posters have said, this is not indicative of real rally enthusiasts. People who carried on like that at the weekend have no involvement in motorsport - they rarely stand in a ditch in the pouring rain to watch, they don't get involved in marshalling or helping the sport in any way. It's a pity to see the sport tarred with this brush.

Rally enthusiasts were not driving around Letterkenny at the weekend - they were spending the weekend with their families, working - or, in the case of my husband, looking back at old photos and videos of Donegal Rally in years past!

BronsonTB

Seems to be huge tolerance in putting up with this as it's just for a weekend....law & order goes out the window & blind eye thrown for most of it. (Exact same happened on a smaller scale in Salthill in Galway a few weeks back)



On the other side, the gardai are just completely out resourced for the sheer volume of law braking that goes on.


Nothing to do with any rally sport, this was just a gathering of anti social behavior because they get away with it ever time.

fawlty682

We have let a young generation of louts run riot with poor policing and soft justice system. With social media, they come from all over when they see that you can do donuts and take over a town like Letterkenny, with little repercussions. Letterkenny has inadequate road network resulting in main roads and streets are just car parks.

donegal_man

Please, spare us the "this isn't the rally crowd" nonsense. This is exactly the behaviour the rally attracts every year. The only difference being this year it was concentrated in the town as there was no reason for them to go out "staging" on rural roads and doughnutting at gates as my ex wife's parents have had to endure.
It's over thirty years since I came to Letterkenny as a student and had a summer job in a local hotel. Even then the staff dreaded the rally weekend. New generation, same behaviour.