Ronan Hession

It had been the briefest of exchanges about some of life’s most important truths, in which poetry and philosophy had given way to bald practicality.

To him love was no union between two otherwise incomplete halves, but more like the gravity that locked two bodies into the same orbit, each doing their own thing but by reference to and in concert with the other. If Marie-Thérèse disappeared to the dark side of the moon once in a while, it was wiser to trust her return to the natural course of their relationship rather than give chase and risk a collision.

It was a miserable time for him, full of doubt and disappointment, injury and exhaustion. His confidence had spoiled, and in a sport where self-belief is the animating force for everything that comes after it, he felt like a ghost on the pitch. Worst of all was the abuse from the supporters who had decided, in that way crowds have of reaching consensus quickly and fervently, that he lacked not only experience, which was forgivable, but commitment, which was not.