From two time IFTA Best Sports Doc winners, One Night in Millstreet is the story of Ireland in 1995, a snapshot of a country told through a prize fight between the then unknown Cabra underdog Steve ‘The Celtic Warrior’ Collins and the larger-than-life champion Chris ‘Simply the Best’ Eubank, a sporting event that would grip and shape an entire nation.
Invoking the best of sporting docs, it’s the story of a very rare kind of event – one that offers a freeze frame of the state of a nation at a moment when everything was about to change. Good times were just around the corner – the Irish weren’t rich yet but there was a sense of excitement and expectation in the air. Property prices were heading north, cars were bigger and newer, jobs were advertised in windows and there was a boxing match in which a heroic underdog would be crowned a world champion.
As an athletic contest it was packed full of high stakes edge-of-your seat drama with a brash outspoken champion haunted by the images of a fighter dying on the canvas before him versus a hungry Irish challenger with nothing to lose. It has religion, racism, jingoism and hypnotism and at its heart a heroic against-all-the-odds fight narrative so captivating you simply couldn’t script it.
It was One Night in Millstreet.
