Alan McLoughlin: Sharp edge, kind heart, and so proud to be Irish

Alan disproves the dictum you should never meet your heroes because they’ll only disappoint you. On the contrary, in eight years of friendship, he made me a better and a wiser man, writes Bryce Evans

Alan McLoughlin of Ireland tries to get away from Daniel Andersson of Sweden. Picture: Billy Stickland

In a review of Alan McLoughlin’s 2014 autobiography, which I wrote with him, The Irish Times called it ‘flinty’. At the time I took this as a bit of a put-down, but I’ve since warmed to this description because Alan was a flinty character. All his life he’d had to be.

The flintiness didn’t just come from his long cancer fight after initial diagnosis in 2012 but a playing career in which he grafted harder than most to prove himself after failing to make the grade at Manchester United. This toughness came, naturally enough, from his parents, who had been through the uncomfortable experience of being Irish in urban working-class England during the Troubles.