Winners and Sinners

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SPEAKER_2 (0:45)

The Hard Shoulder, with Ciara Kelly and Shane Colman. On Newstalk, with Ciara Kelly.

Winners and sinners. On The Hard Shoulder.

Shane Colman (1:44)

Okay, this is Winners and Sinners. We look back at the week that was with a few twists, as always. We're delighted to be joined by freelance journalist Niamh O'Reilly and Off the Balls, Cameron Hill. Cameron, I might start with you first, your winner of the week.

Cameron Hill (1:58)

My winner is James McLean. So just hear me out before I go into this, because he's been everywhere this week doing every interview, every podcast, anyone that's going to listen to him basically in promotion of his new book, The Walls, co-written by Don MacDonald. I haven't read it yet, but I've heard really, really great things, lots of good reviews, even though some people are saying, like one of my mates described it as the Golden Cleric speech of books.

Shane Colman (2:23)

There is an element.

Cameron Hill (2:26)

But why I thought this was great, because he's done all the interviews and there's been a lot of different kind of quotes taken from those interviews and a lot of quotes from his book, most notably Paul Kimmage's interview with him in The Sindow where he discussed his views on mental health and he felt as a man, it would be a weakness for him to go to therapy or he didn't see the need for it.

Whatever you think about his views, whether you agree with them or not, I would disagree on quite a lot of what he said in his interviews. Firstly, it's great publicity for the book. There's no such thing as bad publicity, particularly around this time of year. And I know there's not an exact science when it comes to how much a book is being talked about versus how many copies of books sold it transfers to. But it reminded me of why these books and why a really well-written, not just a sports autobiography, but a great memoir or autobiography generally is such an important thing and a great thing because we get an insight to someone's mind and an insight to who they are and what they think of the world and their life story from their perspective and basically get to hang with them for a while in a way that is impossible for a number of reasons. I'm not next door neighbors with James McClane. I don't know him personally, so this is my best chance to get to know him. And there are certain people, not necessarily James McClane, whose books I've read where I've been fascinated by getting to know them, but I don't know how much time I'd like to spend in their company, per se. I don't know if I'd be able to spend a day with certain people based on what I read about in their book. There was a great one by Lisa Brennan Jobs, the daughter of Steve Jobs, and I came away thinking Steve Jobs is a fascinating character. God, I couldn't spend an hour with him.

Shane Colman (4:09)

No, no, that is completely fair. You're right, that kind of memoir that really is really, I mean, there's a lot, let's face it, there's a lot of brutal autobiography.

Cameron Hill (4:19)

There's that conveyor belt annually of terrible sportsbooks, especially, it seems.

Shane Colman (4:23)

But every now and then, you get gems that kind of stand out. I mean, I think back to ones I've read, like the Paul McGraw one that Vincent Hogan wrote on as well, was absolutely brilliant. Tony Griffin, the Claire Hurler, he had an absolutely brilliant one. I didn't read no answer about Tony. I just picked up the book one day in the Sunday Tribune offices, and I literally couldn't put it down for two days. And I just thought, wow, I really like this fella. He's really interesting. But then there's, you know, the Frank Staples in Autobiography.

No disrespect to Frank.