Documentary on Dan Donnelly for fight anniversary

A documentary in Irish on pugilist Dan Donnelly which was screened on TG4 in 2009 is being redone in English for RTE TV and is planned for showing on the 200th anniversary of the fighter's famous fight at Donnelly's Hollow, writes Brian Byrne.

A number of new interviews are being done in coming weeks for the documentary, which will screen on November 13.

That's a date which will raise a few eyebrows, as it has generally been understood that it was December 13 that the fight took place. But Patrick Myler, the pugilist's biographer, told the Diary this week that this has now been found to be incorrect.

"I was wrong in my book (Regency Rogue, O'Brien Press 1976), and everybody seems to have been wrong," he says. "It was only when Kildare Library Services local collection was researching it, that they found the newspaper accounts of the fight were a month earlier than thought."

A number of groups around Kildare are already considering events to mark the anniversary of a Dubliner who literally left an indelible set of impressions in Kildare, notably his footprints still seen at Donnelly's Hollow.

The event was recreated in An Tostal pageant form twice during the early 1950s, by Kilcullen Boxing Club.