Colin Sheridan is a writer and columnist. A former officer in the Irish Defence Forces he has extensive deployment experience as a peacekeeper with the United Nations, having lived and worked in the former Yugoslavia, West Africa, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Palestine.
When Nelson Mandela was released after 27 years of imprisonment, his first words to his wife, Winnie, were said to be: “Is Martin Carney still playing for Mayo?” So the joke went - a testament both to Carney’s longevity as a Gaelic footballer and the stubbornness of the apartheid regime in South Africa.
I’m not sure what the appropriate modern equivalency is in terms of unjust incarceration - Marwan Barghouti, the Palestinian political leader jailed in 2002 by Israeli security forces under widely disputed charges, perhaps - but an update of the gag would surely read: “Is LeBron James still playing basketball?”
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