Ciaran Hanley

As with most of my sporting awakenings, tv coverage of the 1991 Rugby World Cup got me playing the oval ball game. It was mainly to do with the fact that Ireland, with Ralph Keyes and Jim Staples, reached the quarter finals, only losing narrowly to the Australia of Michael Lynagh and David Campese at Lansdowne Road in Dublin but it was the small scrum-halves like Nick Farr-Jones and Rob Saunders that made me think "I could do that". That day, it was Northern Irishman, Gordon Hamilton who scored the try that put Ireland ahead when he ran onto an inside pass from Jack Clarke and improbably scampered away from the lightning quick Campese then fought off a last ditch tackle from the winger coming across from the far side to go over in the corner. Landsdowne Road erupted. Fans spilled onto the pitch. Ireland were seven minutes away from defeating the mighty Aussies to set up a semi final with the All Blacks. Moments later the old stadium was silenced when Lynagh brilliantly picked...

  I was in a pub in Cork City the day before the 2006 World Cup Final. I was down there on a stag do. Apparently Cork is famous or infamous for its weekend night time door policy - if you look like you've even a few pints on you, you'll not get in anywhere. Hence the almost empty city centre bar on a Saturday afternoon. On the wall, there was a framed Celtic shirt signed by one of the Rebel County's greatest sons and  the Saipan debate reignited  among our party. Roy Keane famously fell out with manager Mick McCarthy on the eve of the 2002 World Cup when differences in opinion about the Republic of Irelands preparation and in particular the facilities at the Pacific Island paradise, led to Keane being sent home, seemingly putting an end to the Republics chances of getting out of the group. It was interesting that the only Keane shirt on the wall in his home city was a Celtic one and there was no sign of the two teams he represented most famously but fell out with so publi...

My Granda asked me how the football team I played for had done earlier that day. “We lost” I told him, “You need to get Joe Fagan to manage yous” he replied. It took me far longer than it should have to register who he was talking about and I think I actually asked “who?”. If he had’ve replaced Joe Fagan with Kenny Dalglish, I’d have got it straight away. Kenny was Liverpool to me at 8 years old but at that stage Joe was still the manager who’d won the League, League Cup and European Cup treble the previous season and I didn’t even recognise his name.  Liverpool fans idolise our managers and that is often displayed by the gaffers name being sung loudly, home and away. I’ve seen footage when Shankly’s name was chanted. Kevin Keegan mentions in his autobiography that Shanks was welcomed by his people on the Kop shortly after he retired singing “Shankly, Shankly, here he is’. You can watch the Liverpool fans singing “Paisley, Paisley” to the tune of Amazing Grace when he appeared on ...

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...