‘It was a lifestyle, not a job’: Confessions of a sports writer who mostly saw it all

I have sometimes thought that writing about sport and having it published in a newspaper is like a stay in hospital. With all those catheters and suppositories, it can be a series of unavoidable humiliations.

From bad predictions to the stupid take, the misquote or wrong name, or turning up at the venue a day before, say, the Malahide Triathlon is due to take place.

It’s a lonely place, just you and a humourless photographer standing early morning on the slipway listening to the lapping water, ne’er a splash.

In sports writing there are countless ways to expose yourself to ridicule.

For the Olympic Council of Ireland election in 2001, I used my inside track to coax the sports editor into believing that the reign of incumbent president Pat Hickey might finally be coming to an end. It was, but not until during the 2016 Olympics in Rio. Always one step ahead, Hickey swept the board in the 2001 voting and beat Richard Burrows by 27 votes to 10.

In 2009 as Ireland were on their way to a first rugby Grand Slam since 1949, yours truly sat in a small huddle with Welsh centre Gavin Henson at Wales’s training base in The Vale Resort enthralled by his bottle tan and the sheen of his hair gel.

Around the corner in a different huddle, coach Warren Gatland was telling the world – minus the joker sitting with Henson – that out of all the teams in the Six Nations , the Welsh players hated Ireland the most. Some belter of a story that was to miss.

Wales coach Warren Gatland, left, speaks to the media. Photograph: Warren Little/Getty

Then occasionally you embarrass yourself.

A few years after Donovan Bailey won the 100 metres gold medal in the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, we had lunch in The Grosvenor Hotel in London. His Irish agent Ray Flynn, who had brokered the meeting, was there too.

After the interview the bill arrived and I reached for a wallet that remained on the bedside locker in a less well-appointed hotel on the other side of town.

The pair looked on as a cartoonish pat down of shirt, coat and jean pockets ensued before the Canadian Olympic champion gracefully reached to his jacket to end the embarrassment-for-all spectacle with a flash of his black and gold credit card.

Canada's Donovan Bailey was the gentleman. Photograph: Lutz Bongarts/Getty

I could read Flynn’s mind: What class of a walloper did The Irish Times send me?

But the job, or more accurately lifestyle, has had its compensations. Over time, exposure to different cultures and slices of life stay with you.

Odd, meaningless things you remember, like walking into the hotel in Jeju, an island off South Korea in the East China Sea, where the International Amateur Boxing Association, a governing body in a permanent state of paroxysm, had decided to stage the boxing world championships in 2014.

The girl at the check-in was sound asleep, face planted on the desk. She must have sensed the altered ions of a customer in front of her, woke up and stood to attention, the little red snooze pressure point smarting on her forehead.

Half my size and insisting on carrying suitcase and laptop upstairs to the room, her tough endurance reminded me of Katie Taylor , whose hotel I set out to find the next day.

Hopelessly lost with my head buried in Korean Google Maps, I turned a corner and slammed into a man, headbutting him in the chest. Serendipity. It was Pete Taylor and Katie out walking to a local Starbucks.

As you do in such circumstances, I shamelessly crashed their coffee morning.

This week GAA correspondent Seán Moran wrote about parking his car facing for Dublin and the drive home after his final championship match on the road, the sunset and much of his career in the rearview mirror .

What an apt metaphor, although I measure out my 30 years not in coffee spoons like TS Eliot’s J Alfred Prufrock but in Wimbledon championships and the privilege of seeing Roger Federer .

The Olympic Games and more privilege with Katie’s gold medal, Kellie Harrington’s two and the rowers; the Irish hairshirt of Rugby World Cups through the eyes of Eddie O’Sullivan, Joe Schmidt and Andy Farrell .

Brazilian security forces outside the Maracana stadium before the opening ceremony of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. Photograph: Johannes Eisele/Getty

But just as memorable as the events were the off-court nights. Dinner on the pavement in Rio with colleagues Keith Duggan, now in Washington, and Ian O’Riordan with the bustle of the city and armed soldiers at the corners, a reminder of 1970s Belfast.

Pints behind the faded awning in mid-Manhattan’s 44th street. Jimmy’s Corner, a dive of a bar as you will find in New York and with a boxing theme, before Katie headlined in Madison Square Garden.

A third bottle at lunchtime with O’Riordan on a day off at the Paris Olympics in a nameless cafe down a side street by Gare de l’Est. The games be damned.

Cafe Relais, in the shadow of Roland Garros, where the Rugby World Cup set up their headquarters for the 2023 tournament and where Kellie won her second…