If you are so inclined, you can buy the latest issue (pictured) of Ireland's Own magazine, which features an article I wrote on strange sports. Have you heard of cluster ballooning? Underwater hockey? The Eton Wall Game? They all feature in my article.
It's the second article I've had in that magazine recently-- I had an obituary of the Irish folk musician Danny Doyle in a September issue.
I hope to have future articles in the coming months!
Also nice to note that even in :secularised' Ireland they've unashamedly put pro-life Mother Teresa on the cover
ReplyDeleteIreland's Own goes bravely against the tide in that regard. It often has religious content and currently has a series about saints (not written by me, though they did plug my book).
DeleteCongrats!
ReplyDeleteWould have bought it on the moment if being in Ireland.
Remembering youth days spent as a sports reporter on the local newspaper and covering various events, at one time around mid- or late 1980s entered underwater rugby as a new and most curious animal on the sports screen! Our town being an industrial center the major sports with great following happened to be handball, speedway and soccer. Interest for sports were enormous and wide-ranging. Average public attendence on handboll used to be absolutely packed full house for the major team in the top of the national league (max 2600 seats in their old arena now demolished and replaced by modern college) and a couple hundreds on the many teams in other divisions below. Even several games in a very varied spectre of sports had several hundreds in public attendance at different levels. The underwater rugby was shortlived but I think the underwater polo competed well in their game. Among the individual sports we could claim ice skater Tomas Gustafson, Olympic Gold Medals in both 1984 and 1988, as a native son. The goalkeeper of the prime handboll team, in a club once upon a time founded by the temperance movement in the 1890s, was at one time perhaps no 1 in the world. Sports was all around at all leves, and it still attracts many of most all ages. This last week the speedway team celebrated another victory as winner of the league, greeted at the main square. Sweden would probably have been a good nation to study if one would have interest in sports enthusiasm as a kind of replacement for religious ardor...
It's good to hear that Sweden is so sports-loving! I guess it CAN be a replacement for religion, but I don't think it has to be. Yes, underwater rugby sounds fascinating, and I also like to hear that handboll gets such big crowds, or at least, that it did in your experience.
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