In a world of limited space, very few books survive the intermittent culling of the shelves in our spare room for very long. A few dozen new sports books get piled up there every year and a few dozen (and more, when the going’s good) are lorried out to the charity shops the following spring. Any that remain have earned their spot.
And yet, as I crane my neck back to check, I see a hunch confirmed. Yes, I do still have an original copy of The Road To Croker by Eamonn Sweeney, published in 2004. Time and again over the past two decades, it has skipped merrily over the scythe and settled back in dusty situ, one of the all-time great GAA books. Can’t give it any higher recommendation than that.
His follow-up, The Last Ditch, isn’t really a follow-up at all. Despite having the same structure – Sweeney following the 2024 GAA championship around the country, just as he did the 2003 one – The Last Ditch is its own thing, with its own story. I don’t know if it will still be on my shelf in 20 years but it’s certain to be one of the most compelling sports books of 2025.
The reason for this is that Sweeney drives the first part of the book by telling the story of his mental health struggles. What began with a panic attack out of the blue on the way to a game in Killarney in 2000 gradually morphed into an all-consuming fear of travel that lasted the thick end of the past two decades. He couldn’t fly, he found himself jumping off a train as the door closed, even being a passenger in a car became too much at times.
Throughout it all, Sweeney was – and is – a well-known sports columnist with the Irish Independent. For someone who has been a public figure for so long, his bravery in laying himself bare like this shines through every page.
The vice grip with which mental illness can squeeze a person’s life is remorseless. Sweeney’s early account of how he bought himself a train ticket from Galway to Athenry on three occasions over Christmas 2023 but turned back from the platform each time is particularly excruciating.
He wants so badly to simply go and sit on a moving train but he can’t bring himself to do it. Eventually, he somehow convinces himself that if he gets a bus to somewhere that the Galway train stops – the small village of Ardrahan in this case – maybe he can will himself to get the train back. When it works, you want to punch the air for him.
As a result, the book becomes something more than just an account of following the big old GAA jamboree around the country. It is still that, yes – but it’s also the gradual, quiet process of Sweeney reclaiming his life for himself. He’s doing the book because the publisher asked. But he’s doing it for himself too.
And so he goes around the country – or at least the bottom half of it. Unlike the first book, there are no skites up to Tempo in Fermanagh or Mayobridge in Down or Ballygawley in Tyrone. But he goes to Killarney and Portlaoise and Thurles and Limerick and Salthill for games and then, as it all comes to a head in Croke Park, to Dublin. Some of the matches are incredible (hurling), some of them are deathly dull (football). He captures the GAA summer of 2024 perfectly.
Along the way, there are some hilarious vignettes beyond the games. As a non-driver, all his travel is on public transport so he’s there for the lone Tipperary man who stands his ground in the face of a ribald and riotous group of Cork supporters as they call him Hozier. And he’s there for the overheard conversations, the singing and the slagging, the quiet moments of life that have nothing to do with the GAA but feel a crucial part of it too.
Ultimately, and probably understandably, The Last Ditch doesn’t have the same vim to it as its classic forebear. Sweeney is 57 now and has been through a couple of decades of mental turmoil, so it would be a surprise if it did.
In the Dublin passages, he spends some time going to religious services – Romanian Orthodox in Ranelagh, Russian Orthodox in Harold’s Cross, Syriac Orthodox in Rathmines, the Dublin Mosque on the South Circular Road. Some of it is beautiful but some of it feels like padding.
The biggest difference between the two books is the author. In the first one, he was in his mid-30s, curious and probing, trying to find Ireland in the GAA championship. He rang up people to interview them, he went to pubs and clubs and towns and villages just to see who he’d find and what sort of GAA chat they could put on him.
In this one, he’s more of a passive observer of it all. Older, wiser, less gung-ho. It makes for a book that while written with Sweeney’s usual elan, doesn’t feel as urgent or as vital as The Road To Croker.
And that’s okay too. Some victories are more important than others.
