Rex Ryan

There's a marriage with Gerard's trajectory and the trajectory of a Dublin working class story.

Yeah.

In the 60s, that time, massive unemployment rate in the inner city.

They were still, the people of the inner city from, you know, 61, 2, 3 onwards are still reeling from unemployment.

Things like the automization of the docks, massive loss of jobs, huge neglect, a lot of terrible decisions by the government and how that whole area of the docklands was dealt with after that period of industrialization.

And you've got families, as Gerard talked about on the podcast, seven, eight to one room.

You've got parents that are working their arses off.

They don't even have the time nor energy to try and ensure that their kids are getting a proper education.

So when you're going to a place called the Red Brick Slaughterhouse, and I once asked Gerard this, I said, you know, if your parents knew this place was called the Red Brick Slaughterhouse, why are they sending you there?

And he said, Rex, do you think they even had the time to think about this stuff?

So he came from incredibly difficult circumstances and then at the same time, massive sense of community.

So if you're talking about the drama in the early days, you have that, let's say, once upon a time in America, noodles and the young lads.

You've got this bond that the people of the inner city had to have because of the neglect and then charting it alongside it.

There is an incredible journey of...

Let's take Gerard, if he is the vehicle, pulling himself out of that by hook or by crook, by any means, all of this up for dispute, how he did it, the moral ramifications of what he did.

But I'll tell you one thing, if I grew up in a middle class family, very lucky, challenges were there, but nothing like that.

small potatoes compared to that.

And I can tell you, if I was growing up in Summerhill in the 60s and I didn't have a dinner, I'd rob a butcher's.

No doubt.

And I'd rob meat from my family and my friends.