Dan McDonnell

Like, it was sort of a three-day trip to get to... I've heard so much about Hamer being from an island somewhere, and that sort of loosely existed in the consciousness of where he's from.

But actually just going there, I mean, it is an extraordinarily remote place.

I mean, what strikes me more than anything, I got to meet some of Hamer's family, some of his...

Some of his friends, you know, heard about his, you know, his life story.

There's like footage of him playing drums in the 90s on a sort of a team, a variety club album.

What strikes me more than anything is, and what I find remarkable about him really, but people talk about his temperament.

This is someone who pretty much until he was close to 50 had never lived or worked outside of

Iceland so this had been his life and when you go to this place you need to reach it by ferry where there's like a couple of thousand people there there's it's like this you know there'll be villages in Ireland with more sort of going on in terms of restaurants and facilities and just the way of life everyone knows everyone it's just so at odds with the football world that we speak about the you know the the modern football machine with like

social media, with interviews, with sort of the spotlight.

And you can understand this thing of Hamer when he came to the Ireland job almost being a little bit surprised by the level of interest and the level of scrutiny and all these comments and commentators because he really does, and I'm just conscious of saying it's so patronising by saying it, but it's just such a simple life that he has led for so long.

Living in a place where his dad cut the hair of everyone on the island because there was no...

There was no barber there.

So everyone went to Grimmer, which was his dad, and they just sat in his toilet, sat on the toilet.

He'd give them a little sip of cognac, and he would cut everyone's hair.

And this is the place.

This is the place that you're talking about it comes from.

They'd be out sort of catching puffins in this sort of summer house on the rocks.

you know, Hamer's dad and his brothers, you know, just living this outdoor life, you know, but also was able to play football at a good level and football allowed him to sort of travel off the island sort of regularly enough and then just all of a sudden his talent disappeared

is spotted and sort of one thing leads to another and next thing you know he's managing Jamaica or managing in Qatar or he's the one out front in this press conference in Prague today with a huge amount of Irish media facing questions it's just for me from going there it's just that sense of like joining the place for

explaining the personality and then almost standing back and realizing wow it's sort of impressive that he's ended up in the position that he's in but again like that sounds very there's a danger of condescending oh look at this quaint place it's a great place people there seem very happy and content with their life there I have to say it sounds beautiful and a great sense of security and do you know what he carries himself we speak about all the time he seems very secure you know he's a very sort of secure person and