An oasis of footballing insanity

Back in 1990, when I’d just started out on the full-time football-writing beat, I happened to find myself in the old FAI headquarters on Merrion Square one evening in the company of various officials, guests and media folk.

Among the gathering was someone I’d last encountered years before when I was covering a different kind of beat, for Hot Press. Amused by my turning up in my customarily dishevelled state among the blazers, he wondered aloud how it was that I’d come to make what clearly seemed to him to be a quantum leap from the world of rock ‘n’ roll to the world of football.

“Oh, you know how it is,” I shrugged, “I just decided to follow the drugs.” I went on to explain that, since once proudly depraved and decadent rockers now seemed entirely preoccupied with either saving themselves through stints in rehab or saving the world through charity gigs and singles, it was clearly to sport that one needed to look to find the new pioneers eager to position themselves at the very cutting edge of pharmaceutical science.