This chronicle of a year in the life of St Joseph's Doora-Barefield GAA club in Co. Clare - which won the William Hill Irish Sports Book of the Year award for 2010 - breaks new ground in Irish sportswriting. Christy O'Connor, a national GAA correspondent who has also been the St Joseph's senior team goalkeeper for 20 years, tells this story with unflinching honesty: a fly-on-the-wall tale of the effort, agony and struggles that define the journey undertaken every season by every club side. This is grassroots GAA at its purest and rawest, a great story brilliantly told.

About the Author
Christy O'Connor has covered GAA as a journalist nationally for thirteen years. For twenty years he has kept goal for the St Joseph's Doora-Barefield senior hurling side, and he is also vice-chairman of the club. He is the author of the acclaimed Last Man Standing: Hurling Goalkeepers, which was shortlisted for the 2005 Boylesports Irish Sports Book of the Year Award.

Reviews
To understand Ireland, you have to understand the GAA. To understand the GAA, you have to read this book. A masterpiece. -- Tom Humphries

An extraordinary saga - unflinching in its honesty. This book is to hurling what Eamon Dunphy's seminal Only a Game? was to soccer writing

-- Richard Fitzpatrick * Irish Examiner *

This is one of the best sports that has been written in Ireland. You'll cry a lot, if you have a soul. And if you love sport, you'll love this book.

* Ger Gilroy *

Deserves its place among the most courageous Irish sports books ever conceived, and one of the finest ever written

-- Michael Foley * Sunday Times *



Book Information
ISBN 9780141399669
Author Christy O'Connor
Format Paperback
Page Count 256
Imprint Penguin Books Ltd
Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Weight(grams) 193g
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 129mm * 16mm