Dermot Ahern: diligent, professional, contradictory, understated. A keeper

WHEN Dermot Ahern was being elevated to near-sainthood on the Late Late Show by GOAL’s John O’Shea, it must have felt to him a bit like being embraced by Mike Tyson.

That is to say; powerfully affirmative, with the additional exciting possibility of losing half an ear.

It was unexpected, too. O’Shea, like Michael O’Leary in Ryanair and the Red Queen in Alice Through the Looking Glass, usually favours the robust “off with his head” approach.