When it’s more than just a game

THE sports autobiography follows a generally predictable arc — promise, achievement, graceful decline — so it’s good to come across a book that breaks out of that strait-jacket.

Offaly hurler Michael Duignan may be well known as a TV pundit following a glittering inter-county career, but his reasons for writing an autobiography are different.

“Writing the book — I described it as being like a giant counselling session, with ups and downs along the way about going on with it, and you also had the fact that no Offaly player brought out a book.