"No Irish sportsperson has had more written and said about him. None has had more of substance to say for himself. Across nearly four tumultuous decades, from callow teen prospect to grey bearded influencer, Roy Keane has transcended sport, redefined the parameters of fame, and captivated the nation. Our hopes, dreams and sometimes our despair have been wrapped up in him, his exploits and outbursts. Oscillating between national treasure and national argument, he put the manic in talismanic, bestriding Lansdowne Road one minute, getting booed there the next.
If the sporting heroes of every era offer a window into a society, We Need to Talk About Roy is a fascinating portrait of who and what we were in the age of Keane, showcasing our vices and virtues, our fortunes and foibles. The best of us, the worst of us. Drink. Religion. United. Begrudgery. The Celtic Tiger. Tabloidization. Saipan. Touching on all the major themes and teams, this remarkable book is a refreshing and entertaining look at how the life and times of our greatest footballer is the story of modern Ireland itself. His progress and pitfalls, revolutions and evolution uniquely intertwined with those of the country that made him.
He is of Ireland and Ireland is of him."
"On a balmy July evening in 1972, to the sound of The Dubliners, Muhammad Ali climbed through the ropes to fight Al ‘Blue’ Lewis at Croke Park. The most famous athlete in the world had somehow been inveigled to Ireland by Butty Sugrue, a charismatic entrepreneur who was ridiculed for trying to do the impossible right up to the moment Ali and his entourage touched down at Dublin Airport. And so began a week of the most glorious mayhem, as ‘the Champ’ charmed the Irish people.
Ali could be found jogging along Wicklow lanes, strolling into The Old Stand pub, chatting with street cleaners, and paying an early morning visit to the GPO to receive a history lesson about the Easter Rising. No matter where he fetched up, wonderful chaos ensued. Traffic stopped. Crowds gathered. The greatest show on earth had come to town.
Through interviews with dozens of those Ali met and worked with over the course of those seven unforgettable days, Dave Hannigan has pieced together an enthralling narrative of one of the most unique events in Irish sporting history."
"On December 11, 1981, Muhammad Ali slumped on a chair in the cramped, windowless locker room of a municipal baseball field outside Nassau. A phalanx of sportswriters had pushed and shoved their way into this tiny, breeze-blocked space. In this most unlikely of settings, they had come to record the last moments of the most storied of all boxing careers. They had come to intrude upon the grief.
'It's over,' mumbled Ali. 'It's over.'
The show that had entertained and wowed from Zaire to Dublin, from Hamburg to Manila, finally ended its twenty-one-year run, the last performance not so much off-Broadway, more amateur theater in the boondocks.
In Drama in the Bahamas, Dave Hannigan tells the occasionally poignant, often troubling, yet always entertaining story behind Ali's last bout. Through interviews with many of those involved, he discovers exactly how and why, a few weeks short of his fortieth birthday, a seriously diminished Ali stepped through the ropes one more time to get beaten up by Trevor Berbick."
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