The Best
The Racket by Conor Niland and Gavin Cooney (Penguin, €15.99)
We have had some brilliant Irish sports books over the past decade, without having all that many stone cold classics. This is a stone cold classic. The story of Conor Niland’s life in professional tennis, told along with Gavin Cooney of The 42, recently became the third Irish book ever to win the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award. And deservedly so.
Niland is the best Irish tennis player of the open era. He was born six weeks after Roger Federer – not for nothing is the book subtitled On Tour with Tennis’s Golden Generation – and the other 99%. The story, then, is one of getting closer than almost everyone on the planet to the sport’s gilded inner sanctum without ever quite making it.
Some of it would break your heart. The drip-drip of him throwing away his one match at Wimbledon after leading 4-1 in the final set is harrowing, all the more so because the prize for winning would have been a Centre Court match against Federer. The travel, the injuries, the grimly observed differences between the haves and have-nots – all of it would grind anyone down.
But this is no misery lit adventure. It’s very funny throughout because Niland and Cooney have packed a lifetime’s absurdity in here too. Like the time he played a set against the 15-year-old son of one of this sponsors, the weirdest match of his life. “Am I really allowed to beat up on my sponsor’s son? Or will he wonder why he’s spending his money on a guy who can’t beat his son easily?”
Niland retired in 2012, injuries finally calling a halt. The fact that he has let a decade pass before writing this book has done it a world of good. The tone isn’t bitter or maudlin – Niland has more perspective than that. He has painted a wonderfully detailed picture of a world most sports fans know next-to-nothing about and kept his sanity while doing so. That’s a win, all by itself.
Obsessed by Johnny Sexton and Peter O’Reilly (Penguin, €24.99)
There is a fantastic tension that runs throughout Johnny Sexton’s autobiography, made all the better for the fact that he probably would have got away without dwelling on it at all. On the one hand, he was (is) a demonic competitor, a relentless setter of standards, a person who calls out deficiencies when he sees them. On the other, that doesn’t always make for a particularly pleasant person to be around.
In someone else’s hands, that side of his character could have been dealt with in a single chapter of a book that, let’s not forget, chronicles one of the greatest ever Irish sporting careers. Sexton and Peter O’Reilly could have thrown in a couple of anecdotes of him losing the rag, leavened it all with a bit of self-deprecation and moved right along to telling everyone about his drop goal against France in Paris.
But what makes this such a rewarding read is that fact that Sexton is willing to paint himself in an often unflattering light. His spikiness, his abrasive nature, his unwillingness to float along – these are a feature of his make-up, not a bug in the system. So much of the book is him wrestling with this side of himself. How did he get like this? Why does he have to be this way?
“Be yourself everyone – except you, Johnny,” was Andy Farrell’s instruction at one point, making it clear to Sexton that he had to change his nature as Ireland captain, become more of a chameleon, work out who he can’t lose the rag with and who needs to be spoken to more softly. In the next breath, Sexton growled at John Cooney for a mistake in training but later rang him to apologise – “Though it went against every fibre of my being”.
The push-and-pull of that, the constant unsparing questioning of himself, lifts this book above the vast majority of the autobiographies of his contemporaries. A brilliant portrait of one of Ireland’s most fascinating people.
My Story by Joe Canning and Vincent Hogan (Gill Books, €21.99)
Joe Canning’s father, Seán, has the best line in the former Galway hurler’s autobiography. At one stage, Canning is writing about the fact that he has kept a number of critical articles and headlines on his phone, years after they were written. He accepts that this doesn’t really say anything good about his ability to let things go.
“My father has this expression when he hears me giving out,” Canning writes. “‘Christ Joe, everybody can’t be a prick!’”
This is not to say that Canning’s book is a whingefest or an exercise in score-settling. It’s not that at all. The picture of Canning that emerges from his autobiography is of a man who has always known that his talent would mean finding an accommodation with the outside world – and one whose instinct is to feel uneasy about striking that bargain.
Consequently, there is a sometimes contradictory sense about him. He has always battled to retain his own privacy and to keep his head generally down. But at the same time, he’s not one bit shy about loading up both barrels and picking off targets when he feels the need.
Ger Loughnane gets a clip or two unloaded on him here, various clubs and county board members in Galway as well. Even Micheál Donoghue and his backroom, the men with whom Canning won his All-Ireland – catch a few strays in the book’s closing chapter, on account of them taking over Dublin and coaching against Galway in the championship.
Expertly put together along with Vincent Hogan, the picture of Canning that comes out of the book is someone who got everything out of his hurling career while staying true to himself along the way. That was never a given.
Whatever It Takes by Richie Hogan and Fintan O’Toole (Gill Books, €21.99)
Richie Hogan doesn’t have a lot of time for waffle or flannel or even really shades of grey. Right throughout this pacy, enjoyable autobiography that he has written with the help of Fintan O’Toole of The 42, Hogan is at all times admirably straightforward. You prepare, you hurl, you win or you lose. You go again.
That’s why it feels such a betrayal towards the end of his years with Kilkenny when, after a few dire seasons with injury, he is back fit and firing but can’t get on the pitch. It doesn’t seem to matter that he is lighting up training – Brian Cody and his management can’t be convinced he’ll last the pace. Hogan has it out with Cody – he eventually gets on for the last 10 minutes of the 2022 final and scores his last ever point in Croke Park.
That Hogan’s back dogged him throughout the second half of his career will come as surprise to nobody. But the extent of it and the lengths he had to go to in order to be able to train and play is jaw-dropping at times. His back spasms have left him lying on the ground in the middle of the street or panned out on the cold floor of a dressingroom toilet, just to be able to get in position for throw-in.
His relationship with Cody is fascinating. He’s not shy about expressing his frustration that Kilkenny never developed along with the game’s tactical changes and confronts the Kilkenny boss on a few occasions in the book with the sort of candour that others would have baulked at.
Throw in some very funny moments – Cha Fitzpatrick’s Cancún adventures would make for a screenplay in and of themselves – and it’s a highly entertaining addition to the Kilkenny canon.
States Of Play by Miguel Delaney (Seven Dials, €15.99)
The boiling frog analogy can feel a little overplayed these days but sometimes needs must. The hijacking of professional football by corporate greed and state-aided finance has been such a gradual process that it can often be difficult to assess exactly where we stand with it all. That’s what makes a book like this so necessary.
Miguel Delaney is the chief football writer for the Independent in London and his book is an exhaustive account of how the game got itself into state it’s in. It charts the rise of uber-capitalism within soccer, initially in England but throughout Europe and the world as well. The changes over the past 30 years, from the setting up of the Premier League to the involvement of nation states are all in here, expertly gathered into a coherent timeline.
How Sportswashing Took Over Football is the subtitle but it feels like the term is there as a hook, rather than the whole. While the story of the involvement of the oil nations of Middle East is told here in great detail, it’s only one part of the overall disaster. Football was never meant to be about geopolitics and yet here we are.
“There can sadly be no illusions about [football’s] role in the 21st century,” Delaney writes towards the end. “It has been a force for autocracy, populism, vested interests, commercialism, hyper-capitalism, ultra-liberalism, the fragmentation of the working classes, the overclass, culture wars, tribalism, soft power and hard power ... It doesn’t need to be like this, though.”
Football needs this book to be read and heard. Part-investigation, part-primal scream, it’s a monumental piece of sports journalism.
The Rest
With integration (apparently) coming down the tracks, the 50th anniversary of the founding of the LGFA is as good a time as any for Unladylike by Hayley Kilgallon (New Island, €23.99) to hit the shelves. An in-depth history of women’s Gaelic football, it is rich in detail and beautifully illustrated.
On a completely different historical plane is Lost Gaels by Peadar Thompson (Merrion, €28.99). A meticulous and heartfelt work, it is a collection of accounts of the lives of GAA members who died during the Troubles. Like all matters to do with the conflict, it is a complex book about which readers are entitled to have mixed feelings. A vital slice of oral history, all the same.
Two other GAA books are worth a look. The Epic Origins of Hurling by Joeys Alumni (MCH, €32.00) is a translation of scholarly Irish work done by Brother Liam Ó Cathnia of St Joseph’s in Fairview, Dublin in the 1980s, tracing the initial stirrings of the game back in the 1700s. And Our Finest Hour by Edwin McGreal (Mayo Books, €28.00) is a phenomenal collection of yarns gathered in across every club in Mayo (47 football and five hurling), each telling the story of the greatest day in their history.
On the soccer front, Munichs by David Peace (Faber & Faber, €23.20) is a fictional retelling of the 1958 Munich air crash and its aftermath. Epic in scale and depth, it has been gloriously reviewed in most quarters. Turning real life into a novel isn’t to everyone’s taste – and Peace’s insistence on repetition as a writing flourish can be a bit grating at times. But there’s no denying his sincerity in honouring the men who were lost.
Elsewhere, two titans of the TV football game have books out. The Hamilton Notes by George Hamilton (Merrion, €22.99) is the great commentator’s follow-up to his 2021 memoir. His sunny, warm character shines through a collection of travelogues, anecdotes and recollections.
In a similar vein, Saturday Afternoon Fever by Jeff Stelling (Headline, €15.99) is a delightful jaunt through the Sky presenter’s career and if the yarns maybe aren’t always as funny as Stelling himself imagines, there’s more than enough of them to keep the whole show rolling along.
This being the 150th year of the IRFU’s existence, a couple of timely skips through history have hit the shelves. Blood And Thunder by Liam O’Callaghan (Penguin, €22.99) is the livelier of them, a deeply-researched social history of the game in Ireland that isn’t afraid to poke at the stuffed shirts that have run the game over the years. Together Standing Tall by John Scally (Gill, €27.99) is a more official affair, an oral history covering the games and players from down the decades.
Next, two very different autobiographies by two very different Irish sports personalities. Bend, Don’t Break by Frank O’Mara (O’Brien, €17.99) is the former middle-distance runner’s story of his fight with Parkinson’s disease. Though it’s a bracing, uncomfortable read at times, you are left in total admiration for O’Mara in his battle.
Davy Russell hasn’t faced serious illness but like most jockeys he’s had no shortage of injury to overcome down the years. They’re a feature of My Autobiography by Davy Russell and Donn McClean (Eriu, €22.00), along with the people he’s fallen in with and out with over the course of a long career. Russell has always been one of the most interesting jockeys in the weigh room and the sense you get here is that he leaves it with very few regrets.
To finish, some books that are mercifully NOT autobiographies. Death Of A Boxer by Pete Carvill (Biteback, €23.20) is not quite This Bloody Mary Is The Last Thing I Own but it’s fishing in similar waters to Jonathan Rendall’s 1997 classic. Carvill interrogates boxing and specifically he goes rooting around in the psyche of those who get into the ring, even though they know it can end in their death. Even if it’s a little disjointed at times, it’s always thoughtful and always probing, chasing the elusive why.
A Farewell To The Fairways by Dermot Gilleece (Red Stripe Press, €19.99) is a gorgeous sign-off from the doyen of Irish golf writers. Gilleece graced the pages of just about every paper in town over the course of six decades and this is his reflection on it all. The words are exacting and precise now as they ever were, needless to say.
On which note, The Year’s Best Sports Writing 2024 edited by Jane McManus (Triumph Books, €24.00) isn’t to be missed. Get it for the Sally Jenkins masterpiece on Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert – Bitter Rivals. Beloved Friends. Survivors – which genuinely worth the cover price all by itself.
The Kids
Never has there been a greater spread of sports books aimed at young people, from illustrated histories to biographies to YA novels and beyond. The Story of Irish Rugby by Gerard Siggins (O’Brien, €19.99) is the perfect primer for a young person just getting into the game, artfully written by Siggins, author of the popular Rugby Spirit series. Beautifully illustrated by Graham Corcoran, it’s a must for any rugby mad youngster.
Ireland’s Call by Paul O’Flynn (Gill, €14.99) is a lightly fictionalised retelling of the 2024 Grand Slam, aimed at the 8-11 year-old age range. It keeps to the general story of the Six Nations campaign and scatters a few imagined conversation between players and coaches throughout.
And for younger readers – or older ones who want to read to them – ‘Twas The Match Before Christmas by Julianne McKeigue (O’Brien, €16.99) is a lot of fun. A reworking of the most famous Christmas poem of them all, it’s set in Croke Park and illustrated by Brian Fitzgerald. Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!
