Ciaran Hanley

I like bookends and if you go back to the beginning of Steven Gerrards 17 year Liverpool playing career, it started with him wearing the number 17 jersey. My first memory of him is a goal at Anfield against Sheffield Wednesday in about 1999. He picked the ball up 35 yards out and slalomed his way through their defence before finishing low across the keeper into the bottom far corner. I looked at my mate and said “This boy is gonna be great”. Just how great I could never have predicted. It was only 9 years since we won the league, surely it wouldn’t continue like that for much longer. Gerard Houllier had taken over from Roy Evans, things were changing. Owen, Gerrard, Murphy and Carragher were coming through. Fowler was one of the best strikers in the country. Hyypia, Hamann, Babbel and Heskey were added. McAllister was an oldie but a goodie.  Gerrard had struggled with injuries for his first year or so. Groin problems mostly that were, oddly, linked to his wisdom teeth. Whatever it ...

In 1999 , I spent almost an entire summer working a water gun game on the boardwalk in Wildwood, NJ, USA, so maybe this should be called “my greatest movie theater experience”. I first heard about Wildwood in primary school when one of my classroom pals went to America on holiday and came back wearing a hideous khaki wind sheeter type thing, upon it, the name of his vacay destination and tales of a huge toy shop as he drew me an “R” the wrong way round. 12 years later, my friends and I booked a 2 week return flight to New York and when we got there we each phoned the airline and extended it to 3 months, the maximum time you were allowed to spend on holiday in the states. There was no need for a visa. When I say working, it was a fairly leisurely occupation. I manned the game during the day shift and tried to get customers to stop walking past me in the 40 degree heat with 100% humidity and play the game. Business wise, the day was notoriously slow so I mostly just listened to albums I...

My son went back to daycare a couple of weeks ago so now is as good a time as any to take stock and look back over the last 4 months. It started with that moment on the 17th of March when, flanked by his chief medical and scientific advisers, Boris Johnson stood at that plinth with his hand on his head, looking for all the world like he was saying God help us all. Until that point, the UK had been fairly flippant about coronavirus and the dangers. Herd immunity was the first of several new words or phrases that would enter the common vernacular. I woke up to a new WhatsApp group for work accompanied by an opening message that included something like “…following what has happened overnight…” My first reaction was “what the hell has happened overnight?” given that every time the BBC News notification sounded on someones phone it was more bad news. My second reaction was to type a message into this new work chat informing my colleagues that instructions for my role of paying staff were i...

The victory parade started on the outskirts of the city and made its way slowly down to the docks were one million people waited to celebrate number six. As usual, I was watching Liverpool on the telly.  Chops and I talked about getting the overnight ferry from Belfast but I was the sensible one at 3 in the morning, mostly because I started to feel the effects of the triathlon earlier in the day. I couldn't even stay up another hour to watch what turned out to be one of the greatest shocks in boxing history when Andy Ruiz stopped Anthony Joshua. My mother in law told me she dated a Liverpool Echo photographer in the 60's and she produced a box with a photo of the 1965 FA Cup final victory parade he had given her. She gave it to me the day after Madrid as we all watched the victory parade as a family. There were incredible scenes when the bus entered the Strand - deafening noise, red smoke bombs going off, flags waving and so many people as the players swung scarves above their ...