The Last Ditch: GAA, the Fear, and One Man’s Long Road to Croker
€13.18
In the summer of 2024, sports columnist Eamonn Sweeney set out to follow the All-Ireland championships around the country, retracing footsteps he’d first laid down in his work, ‘The Road to Croker’. But there was one big problem. For many years, he had struggled with a crippling travel phobia that left him largely confined to his hometown in West Cork. To fulfil his publishing contract, he had to face his deepest fears. ‘The Last Ditch’ is a story about mental health, hidden shame and a life-changing epiphany in a remote train station. It’s about a hurling championship which may have been the greatest ever played and a football championship which definitely was not.
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'A BOOK THAT ENTERS THE GAA CANON' THE 42
'A MAGICAL-MYSTERY TOUR OF A GAA SEASON' IRISH INDEPENDENT
'A cracking read ... a championship season as redemption song.' MICHAEL CLIFFORD
"All the tension of a tight knockout encounter ... one of the books of the year." MIKE McCORMACK
Twenty-one years on from his bestselling The Road to Croker, sportswriter Eamonn Sweeney set out to follow the All-Ireland championships around the country once again. But there was one problem. To make the journey, he would have to confront a secret fear that had quietly shaped his life.
On the pitch, The Last Ditch captures the drama of a hurling season for the ages and a football championship that tested even the most loyal supporters - a landscape of unlikely triumphs, renaissances, shocks, cliffhangers and heartbreak.
Off the field, it becomes something deeper: one man's reckoning with middle age, masculinity and a crippling travel phobia that for two decades had dictated the span of his quiet, rural existence. As he moves through towns, terraces and conversations, Sweeney discovers not just the unifying spirit of the GAA, but the possibility of reclaiming a life he thought he'd lost.
Both an unforgettable sporting odyssey and a profoundly human memoir, The Last Ditch is a testament to how in Ireland, when all else fails, the GAA brings us home again.
Additional information
| Weight | 237 g |
|---|---|
| Dimensions | 19.6 × 12.6 × 2.8 cm |
| Book_author | Sweeney, Eamon |
| Publisher | Hachette Books Ireland |
| Imprint | Hachette Books Ireland |
| Cover | Paperback |
| Pages | 336 |
| Language | English |
| Dewey | 796.337092 (edition:23) |
| Readership | General – Trade / Code: K |
