Just one year to change minds

It’s not today or yesterday Joe Brolly came to the attention of your eagle-eyed columnist. Or eagle ears, maybe.

Nigh on 30 years ago I recall a classmate slumping next to yours truly in an English lecture and griping all the way through 40-odd minutes on the romantic poets about this northerner he’d marked in a Gaelic football game the day before, when UCC had taken on Queen’s University. Quick lad. Chatty.

“All talk, all guff,” said my pal. “All day long ‘Give it to me boys, give it here boys’, to his own team-mates. Worst thing was he was able to back it up. Destroyed us.”