‘There were riot police everywhere. There must have been 2,000 of them. You realised then, this isn’t Galway-Mayo’
He was in the ExCel Arena when his friend and client Katie Taylor won her Olympic gold. He was there along the touchline, supervising a few substitutes of the Polish national soccer team warm-up, when Kuba Blaszczykowski equalised for the Euro 2012 hosts against their dear friends Russia which seemed to make the National Stadium in Warsaw quake.
He was out there on Croke Park the sunny day Laois rattled Dublin in the All-Ireland quarter-final in front of 70,000 and a sea of boys in blue, him being the maor foirne for Justin McNulty’s team. In a sense, he’s been sport’s own Forrest Gump, with his peripheral but significant role in helping shape a national institution and moment, having his own unforgettable encounter against the Russians, and being there to run, Barry, run when the Laois management wanted an instruction or some water into one of their players.
