November 2022 was the scheduled release of a 42 year in making book, my epic ChampIAN STEWARTnova. Following the Northern Ireland football team 1980-2009. In true irony, the only parts of that book that remain in full are the only TWO parts NOT done by me. 1.The cover art and design. I have them on…
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My New Football Book: ChampIAN STEWARTnova – Following the Northern Ireland Football Team 1980 – 2009 is currently in its final edits. This took a lot longer than I anticipated – the writing was basically completed by October 2010, but one thing after another led to delays. Many chapters had to be skipped, cut, replaced,…
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I was driving through Yeovil in England in early 2008 when a call came through from a renowned Northern Irish journalist “Jonny, I’ve been asked to do a few interviews on Northern Ireland football fans for a new book, are you interested?” Straight away it was a “yes” and that was it – I was…
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The very words “Finn McCool’s Irish Pub” will linger forever in my own memory and those of 5 other Northern Ireland fans. The reason being that back in 2005 we launched the glamorous and innovative South of England Northern Ireland Supporters Club in a bar of that very name in the seaside town of Weymouth…
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I had never been to Brighton. It is very well known – a popular beach resort in Sussex on England’s South Coast which is famed for being very vibrant in the summer. It also has a gay district, but let’s not go into that. The South of England Northern Ireland Supporters Club made a habit…
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The Day We Did Colchester….Crossing into Essex was just something that had to be done by the SOENISC. We had held many meetings in the south of England during our first year of existence, but these were mainly in the south west (Bournemouth, Weymouth, Torquay, Southampton) or as random as Cowes, on the Isle of…
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“Life is a time machine” – Oasis. In October 2008, I was in Slovenia for the first time. I have already posted a few times on here about Ljubljana, Bled and also my journey from Italy’s Trieste over the border to Slovenia. This blog post details the football match Slovenia v. Severna Irska (Northern Ireland),…
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When life gets this good, you have to pinch yourself sometimes to check its real. Looking back (only 6 months or so ago…) this memory will linger long forever in my memory. In many ways, my obsession for football and lunacy reached a peak in Bled, Slovenia. A peak which would have been a good…
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