Cork’s Pat Ryan: ‘I knew I was running on empty. I’ve only had two nights of unbroken sleep in the last year’

At the Cork banquet on the night of the All-Ireland final Matt Cooper conducted a Q&A with Pat Ryan. Before they appeared on stage Cooper met him in a private area upstairs to discuss how they would handle the exchange. Ryan told him that he could “ask him anything”. In his day-job as a current affairs broadcaster, Cooper is never sweating on that invitation, but this wasn’t a night for hard questions, and it wasn’t a night for answers. Nobody knew the answers. “While he was very articulate [on stage] he was clearly in shock and in pain at what had happened that day,” says Cooper. “I can’t remember what I asked him or what he said but two things stick out. One was the genuine affection...