'Sometimes you do have to piss people off to grab their attention'

What is the future for sport as a platform for protest? The balance is delicate between making a point that resonates and rattles folk - and being seen as a public nuisance

CLIMATE CHANGE: The climate action protest at the Irish Open in Lahinch in 2019. Pic: Extinction Rebellion Clare’s Facebook page.

High summer of 2001 and the eyes of the world were trained on Genoa. Politicians from the most powerful of nations were in town for the G8 summit to talk policy and economics and global poverty. Bono and Bob Geldof were engineering face time with everyone from Tony Blair to Vladimir Putin as part of a drop-the-debt campaign.

It was also a powder keg, the streets already in chaos as the two Irish celebrities shook hands and clapped backs in the neoclassical opulence of the Palazzo Ducale. Bono was among those to criticise the ‘rioters’ among a gathering of 200,000 anti-globalism protesters, but Aisling Wheeler was seeing a different story unfold on the ground.