More than just a mug's game

He’s changed. Every so often, working in the bar, he realises that.

By rule he doesn’t drink in Mulligan’s. People thought that it would be a disaster, he’d be his own best customer. He’s there to run the bar, not drink in it. In other places in another time he wrecked some pub property. Not now, not in Mulligan’s. “I take great pride in it. I did the joinery in here myself. I have too much respect for it. The days of getting into scrapes are behind me, I think.”

There was a time when he’d get into a good few jousts. His new book starts with him waking up in a jail cell the morning after Tyrone were beaten by Down in the 2008 Ulster championship. He’d been thrown into that jail cell because a few hours earlier he had been thrown out of a nightclub. Later that summer, Tyrone would win a third All-Ireland. Mulligan was part of it. For some reason Mickey Harte never threw him out.