1.“The month was August 2017. He was back on the race where, two years earlier, he had fallen for a girl from Madrid and it was happening again. Another coup de foudre. Another Madrilenian. “She made me smile and happy,” he says. “I thought I was 25.”
“But he was 33. And Deborah was pregnant.
“A month later, she called him at the World Championships in Norway and said she didn’t want to see him again. A month after that, her lawyers filed for divorce. A week after that, he returned to Monaco and was disowned by a boyhood friend: “You’re a monster, Nico.” And then things got really shitty.”
2.“We were into a new era with the Republic of Ireland competing seriously for qualification.Unfortunately, we were also into an era when the International Society of Referees decided they didn’t like Ireland much and sought to stymie them at every turn.
“That was the story of the late 70s and early 80s.These were ‘The “I still can’t understand how that goal was disallowed” years.’ Horror stories abounded from Paris, Sofia and Brussels.
“Giles later observed that you could only be properly confident that an Ireland goal away from home had been let stand once you saw it written down in the paper in the next day.”
3. “His only interest in the card-game tonight is winding up my granddad — Dick ‘The Boiler’ Conroy. They have a long and wonderful friendship that is rooted in football, and Fr Tom knows exactly how to get The Boiler to blow.
“He goads my granddad about how he didn’t rate such-and-such a footballer – and a year later that man was an All-Star. And is now acclaimed as one of the greats.
“The bait swings through the air. The Boiler knows he’s being goaded. He knows he needs to ignore it. But he can’t. The steam is too much. The lid comes off. And the room convulses again.”
4.“‘McGuigan doesn’t watch the fight back. It’s too painful for a man who has known far too much tragedy in his life.
I’ve watched it enough. For my 50th birthday, my kids sat down with me and we watched it together. You look back and you see all the people that were there that are no longer here…”
‘McGuigan’s father, Pat, died two years later at just 52. McGuigan’s brother, Dermot, was in his corner at Loftus Road. He took his own life in 1994.”
‘But nothing prepared him for what happened to Danika.”
5. ‘“All of a sudden I’d got loads of notifications on Twitter. ‘All the best’ — lots of messages like that. It was really strange. But then I saw the reason why all these messages were being sent. There was a list of all the lads that United had let go. It had been posted on Twitter and it was the official ‘retained and released’ list. And that was how I found out.”
‘How do you even begin to understand the shattering effects that had on a young footballer who had known virtually nothing but the United system?’
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The Boiler, the bad days and devastating heartbreak: It's the week's best sportswriting
1. “The month was August 2017. He was back on the race where, two years earlier, he had fallen for a girl from Madrid and it was happening again. Another coup de foudre. Another Madrilenian. “She made me smile and happy,” he says. “I thought I was 25.”
“But he was 33. And Deborah was pregnant.
“A month later, she called him at the World Championships in Norway and said she didn’t want to see him again. A month after that, her lawyers filed for divorce. A week after that, he returned to Monaco and was disowned by a boyhood friend: “You’re a monster, Nico.” And then things got really shitty.”
Paul Kimmage examines the skin and all within Nico Roche, for the Irish Independent.
2. “We were into a new era with the Republic of Ireland competing seriously for qualification.Unfortunately, we were also into an era when the International Society of Referees decided they didn’t like Ireland much and sought to stymie them at every turn.
“That was the story of the late 70s and early 80s.These were ‘The “I still can’t understand how that goal was disallowed” years.’ Horror stories abounded from Paris, Sofia and Brussels.
“Giles later observed that you could only be properly confident that an Ireland goal away from home had been let stand once you saw it written down in the paper in the next day.”
For RTE, Conor Neville explores some dark, dark days of Irish international football.
3. “His only interest in the card-game tonight is winding up my granddad — Dick ‘The Boiler’ Conroy. They have a long and wonderful friendship that is rooted in football, and Fr Tom knows exactly how to get The Boiler to blow.
“He goads my granddad about how he didn’t rate such-and-such a footballer – and a year later that man was an All-Star. And is now acclaimed as one of the greats.
“The bait swings through the air. The Boiler knows he’s being goaded. He knows he needs to ignore it. But he can’t. The steam is too much. The lid comes off. And the room convulses again.”
Paul Rouse remembers Fr Tom Scully and his impact on Offaly, in The Examiner.
4.“‘McGuigan doesn’t watch the fight back. It’s too painful for a man who has known far too much tragedy in his life.
‘McGuigan’s father, Pat, died two years later at just 52. McGuigan’s brother, Dermot, was in his corner at Loftus Road. He took his own life in 1994.”
‘But nothing prepared him for what happened to Danika.”
The Star’s Kieran Cunningham meets Barry McGuigan, still heartbroken after the death of his 33-year-old daughter Danika.
5. ‘“All of a sudden I’d got loads of notifications on Twitter. ‘All the best’ — lots of messages like that. It was really strange. But then I saw the reason why all these messages were being sent. There was a list of all the lads that United had let go. It had been posted on Twitter and it was the official ‘retained and released’ list. And that was how I found out.”
‘How do you even begin to understand the shattering effects that had on a young footballer who had known virtually nothing but the United system?’
For The Athletic, Daniel Taylor follows the ‘Premier League’s forgotten kids’ touted as hot property in academies until, suddenly they weren’t.
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