I was a competitive irish dancer for years and stopped recently. It’s always been blatantly obvious that there’s cheating and politics going on.
I’m not excusing the obvious cheating obviously, but it’s also a subjective sport which adds the element of judges opinion which makes it tricky. If you get a judge that likes big jumps, birdies and all the tricks then they will subconsciously mark down dancers with more technical steps rather than big fast jumps. Vice versa for judges who prefer traditional steps and mark down dancers with all the tricks and jumps. It’s swings and roundabouts and sometimes you’ll get a judge who prefers your style and it works in your favour and other times you’ll get a judge that doesn’t. You benefit sometimes and you lose sometimes. It’s just part of it being a subjective sport. Sometimes judges just don’t see things too- if they are watching another dancer for example. I got marked down by a judge who saw me fall out my rock in my reel on my right step. The other judges were watching another dancer at that time and only saw me nail my left step rock. So I didn’t get marked down by them. On paper it looked like the other judge tanked my score but they were the one who saw my (horrendous!) rock. For as long as dancers have to share the stage and judges attention, that kind of thing will happen.
the blatant cheating and favours is awful however. Unfortunately every sport is full of it though and Irish dancing isn’t unique for it. It’s shit and as a dancer it’s just the unspoken expectation that there will be
also, you’re posting in the wrong place. Nobody here will give a shit because it’s far too niche a sport so why would they. I don’t care about cheating at ice hockey competitions because I don’t care about ice hockey. Nobody is going to read this and suddenly take a massive interest in the political cheating at Irish dancing feises.