Northern Ireland’s support was pretty shit in the 1990s. That’s just the way things were. I attended at least one home match a year, and for the last 4 years of the decade, I didn’t miss one. I have fond memories of EVERY trip to Windsor Park to watch my beloved Norn Iron (win, lose…
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* This is a very old post, I cleared things up a bit better on the Great Exam Heist and the Aftermath on those articles. This story also appears in my book, Backpacking Centurion Volume 1 – Don’t Look Back In Bangor! It was June 1997 and I said my farewells to a school…
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When I booked my world tour in 2007, I knew I would not be missing too much of the UK football season, as I would be away for July, August and September. However as part of the tour, I found myself in Los Angeles, my first time in California. I had always been a…
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It was March 2005 and I was in Poland’s capital Warsaw on my 25th Birthday. I had taken a mobile phone with me, but didn’t expect to use it. I turned it on just to check and I had received a text message from Jason Hawkins, head of media at Nerve Media, Bournemouth University. I…
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I had visited Toronto in 2001 and even stepped foot inside The Rogers Centre, home of the Toronto Blue Jays Baseball Team (who won the North American title loads of times in the 1990s), but didn’t on that visit see a match. On my second visit to Canada, and Toronto, I decided to get a…
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I found myself exposed to the innocence of communism a few times. I had never seen Eastern Europe before the wall came down. But I had savoured the drab, greyness of a growing Varshava in 2005. I also strode my skeleton through the streets of Beijing in hope of finding an answer to the question…
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It’s a great honour and a privilege to play sport and to take part. What is an even bigger honour is to tell people that you were the champion at that sport in your country. I was and we were. I am proud to say I was and really, I wouldn’t have had it any…
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I’d watched Big Brother since series 1 in the year 2000 (wasn’t it strange that we were all fully grown?). I even applied to be on it, sending in a video of me cutting meat in Steenson’s butchery (I’m going to have to find that video sometime and fire it up!). I also appeared in…
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I had been to Southampton a few times, sometimes to fly from the airport back to George Best Belfast City. Other times, as band manager of the waves, I had been to rehearsals and gigs there. It is a big city, and much less busy than London. It was only a matter of time before…
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Back in 1998 in those glory days when simply watching Northern Ireland playing football or getting pished down the Wins (Bangor) or the Monico (Belfast) I happenned to help with an election campaign. It wasn’t by chance and it wasn’t because I wanted to. It was just because I had just turned 18 and life…
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