The Best Sporting Images of the Summer
15 August 2022
I picked the best sporting images of the Summer for a piece in the Irish Examiner. You can read it here.
Summer
Piece on Going to a Championship Match in Thurles
10 May 2022
I went to the Clare Cork hurling match in Thurles. Wrote about it for the Irish Examiner. You can read it here.
Tadhg Coakley: The 10 sporting emotions this summer has evoked
20 August 2021
August, 2021. Is it just me or has sport made this summer more glorious? And we’re still only in August with so much more to look forward to. In this Irish Examiner piece I outline some emotions that sport evoked in me this summer. Read it here.
The Hawthorn and The Swift: You Have to Smile
20 May 2019
It’s a summer Sunday morning and you’re on the road in South-East Limerick. From your passenger seat you watch the blossoming hawthorn ribbon the countryside. There’s a cycling charity event on the road and the going is slow, so you have time to enjoy the undulating view. Hawthorn enfolding fields all shapes and sizes – good land, middling land, fallow and scrub. Draping the livestock in the promise of a summer of plenty, a promise older even than the old promise of hurling’s plenty.
All The Old Feelings
13 May 2019
I’m sitting in a Costa in Douglas on Sunday morning waiting for Cummins Sports to open and it hits me. The match approaches with all its baggage: anxiety, stress, the need to win, to be validated again by sport. All the old feelings. I can hardly drink my Cortado, my knee starts hopping. Fuck’s sake, calm down, it’s only the bloody first-round. The sunshine is harsh and bitter when I step outside, I forgot my sunglasses.
Profane Time and Sacred Time in Sport
5 February 2019
It’s February 3rd 2019. I’m at the Cork Wexford National Hurling League match in Páirc Uí Chaoimh. And I’m thinking about time. I’m thinking back to a different time, six months ago on July 29th, 2018, when last I watched the Cork senior hurlers play – against Limerick, in Croke Park in the All-Ireland semi final.