Ciaran Hanley

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 ...

This is not to criticise what was achieved or not achieved before, more to put into context why Klopp has been canonised by Liverpool fans. Liverpool won the league for the 18th time in 1990 under Kenny Dalglish, after that there were spells of 6 years and 7 years when we won absolutely nothing. That is a shock to the system when you've grown up watching your team win year after year - the double in 86, the league in 88, FA Cup in 89, league again in 1990. This doesn't tell the whole story because we also lost the World Club Final in 1984, the European Cup final in 1985, the League Cup Final in 1987, the FA Cup Final in 88 and the league at home to Arsenal in a final day decider, lost in the most dramatic of circumstances. We were also runners up in the league in 85 and 87. Simply put, Liverpool were always winning trophies or losing them. After that 1990 League triumph, it was business as usual in the 90/91 season as Liverpool topped the league approaching the business end but...

I try and get over to see Liverpool from Northern Ireland at least once a year. I'd love to go more, life and finances permitting but I'm delighted I got to see Jurgen Klopp's Liverpool this many times. There were much bigger games over the 9 years but these were mine and they tell a story of what it was like when he was our manager. Klopp achieved more in those 9 years than 8 Liverpool managers had achieved in the previous 25. 1. Man City Premier League March 2016 A few days after losing to them on penalties in the League Cup Final, I was at Anfield with my father in law, Ronnie, for an evening game against City. We beat them 3 nil. Raheem Sterling and his agent made such a big deal of getting out of Liverpool to go to City, this was his first time returning to Anfield. He was taken off at half time, such was the grief he was getting from the home fans. It was an evening game so we stayed overnight. The next day, Ronnie had me away up in Kirkby to see where he first worked...

My first game at Anfield was Liverpool v Chelsea in March 1994 and I remember it vividly. My da has no interest in football but his brother Jimmy, my uncle, was a red, although that wasn't always apparent to me. He never married and lived with my grandparents although I think he eventually bought the house they'd lived in for most of his life. My nana and granda spent their days in the kitchen but the front room was Jimmys. He drove buses for a living and then when he came home he just wanted his dinner and peace and quiet in the front room watching tv. We would visit nana and granda frequently and I'd always have conversations about football with my granda. Sometimes Jimmy would be there and sometimes he wouldn't. I don't remember talking to him about Liverpool or football but at some point I discovered he was a red and I remember being surprised. He bought me an official Liverpool annual after the double winning 1986 season. It wasn't like the normal red LFC a...