Books

Hanging From the Rafters

by Shannon Kieran

€24.99

International delivery. Ships in approx. 3-5 days (subject to availability)

IN the 1980s basketball went from being a small, almost secretive sport to the biggest, best and sexiest spectacle in Ireland. The whitest country in the world, in the midst of a crippling recession, was suddenly electrified and enthralled by the most spectacular athletes team sport in Ireland had ever known, the majority of whom were young black Americans straight out of big-time college basketball who had marginally missed out on the NBA.

Hanging from the Rafters details the magic and mayhem that was triggered when those two worlds – black America and small-town Ireland – collided. Some, like Mike Hancock from the famed Georgetown programme, couldn’t hack it and left; others like Lennie McMillian and Jerome Westbrooks stayed to become the first new Irish.