Ciaran Hanley

It's been a very emotional few days. On Thursday morning, I was rushing around getting ready to drive 250 miles to Cork to see Joe Bonamassa Play Rory Gallagher at The Marquee. If you don't know, Bonamassa is one of the great blues guitarists of our time and a huge Rory Gallagher fan. Recently, none other than Johnny Marr from The Smiths cited Gallagher as one of his main influences. If you love guitar solo's you'll love RG and JB! The first time I remember hearing Gallagher's name mentioned was when he died in 1995 and my housemate at university told me his older brother was heartbroken by the news and sat up all night, drowning his sorrows but got worried about drinking alone so poured some in the dogs bowl so he could join him!  There was a CD shop on Royal Avenue in Belfast that sold classic albums for a fiver in the early 2000's. One day I went in and bought Morrison Hotel by The Doors and Against The Grain by Rory Gallagher. That was the album that got me ...

Once famous for thrilling chariot races, Circo Massimo was transformed into a stadium full of fans who had travelled from all over the world to visit the Eternal City and see David Gilmour play for six nights on the Luck and Strange Tour. Another ancient Italian location for a concert following the 2016 shows at Pompeii. I first became aware of Pink Floyd when I was at university in Coleraine, my portable CD and tape player was kept in the living room and everybody in the house played their music on it. One night I came in from the pub, pressed play, put the headphones on and lay down on the sofa expecting to hear what I'd been listening to last (Chemical Brothers Exit Planet Dust) but instead of heavy electronic beats, I was met with long, transcending guitar solos. I listened the whole way through and then I looked to see what it was. Written on the blank tape in pen was "Pink Floyd - The Division Bell". This was the brit pop/dance music/ Tarantino movie soundtrack era ...

Dundalk Football Club are staring into the abyss. One of Irelands greatest teams sit bottom of the league, having lost their last 3 games and were unable to pay player and staff wages a couple of weeks ago as the Brian Ainscough era began to unravel. I'm from Newry but we always had more in common with Dundalk, 12 miles up the road but over the border, than Banbridge, 12 miles up the road in Northern Ireland. On both sides of my family there are Dundalk connections and it always felt familiar. My first ever football match was on a Sunday in the autumn of 1988 with my uncle Leslie, not even a blood uncle, a Dundalk man married to my mothers sister. I was competing in the scór for our GAA club with his children later that evening. During the day, they were looking after me, with my parents at work, we went to see his mother who lived in the town. My auntie Helen and the younger children were left to visit while I was brought to the football at Oriel Park. Derry City were the visitors...

The All Ireland football semi final 2002, Ray Cosgrove has a fairly routine looking free kick in front of Hill 16 filled with Dublin fans expecting him to level the game and send it to a replay. He sets the ball out to the right of the right post, it curls back but not enough, hitting the post and dropping down in front of goal, an Armagh and Dublin player go for it, the Armagh player fists it away and another Armagh player carries it to safety. The referee blows his whistle, Armagh players and fans go ballistic. A first All Ireland final since Joe Kernan, Armagh Manager, lost to Dublin in 1977, lies ahead. The All Ireland Football semi final 2024, Armagh have just extended their lead to two points and we are in the one added minute at the end of extra time. The fans have turned Croker orange but their team are playing in black. Kerry, in the green and gold, bring the ball up into the Armagh half, they move it back and forth across the middle of Croke Park looking for the best angle to...

My brother and I left Croke Park yesterday evening, laughing with joy at the sporting spectacle we'd just witnessed and exhausted from the amount of concentration required to watch an All Ireland Hurling Semi Final between the great Limerick team going for five in a row and Cork who were determined to stop them. I missed 75% of the poc outs because I'm so used to watching football where the keepers generally take an age to restart the game. There is no hanging about in hurling. If you miss the keeper's poc out then it can be difficult to find where the slíotar has ended up on the wide open spaces of Croke Park. The game is so fast, the sequence from keeper at one end to over the bar for a point at the other end might only be a few seconds. This was my first game of hurling and my brothers first Gaelic game at Croke Park full stop. I knew it would be fast but it still takes your breath away. There is no time to talk about what happened in the previous play. More than 80,000 ...