It looked like it was Game Over for the Rossmeister General. I was staring down the barrel of the big four-oh! And what did I have to show for it?I was an out-of-work rugby coach who was soon to be divorced. My old dear was sliding away in a nursing home in a certain suburb of West Dublin.

And my old man had brought the country to the verge of, like, nuclear annihilation. And if that wasn’t bad enough, my teenage daughter was in love again. My sister-in-law was about to give birth to a baby that was possibly mine.

And Castlerock College was about to go – I can’t even say the word – co-ed. People kept saying that we were facing Ormageddon. But I was like, ‘Hey, it’s not the end of the world.’ Because Father Fehily used to say, ‘Sometimes good things come to an end so that better things can come to a beginning.’