Sometimes sport takes over Irish life: we meet up at the match everyone is going to, or we stay in touch by talking about sport. And sport’s the stuff of family lore – the wrong turn at Ballybrit that led to Connemara instead of the Galway Races, the ex who came good with tickets, the All-Ireland winner throwing an American football on the beach. The poems collected in this anthology know sport, and they respond to the way that sport in Ireland forms our alternative history, viewed from the stands, the sideline, and the centre circle.

The first ever anthology of sports poems to be published in Ireland, Everything to Play For is edited by poet John McAuliffe and includes a foreword by World Champion athlete Sonia O’Sullivan, one of Ireland’s best-loved sporting heroes. With poems on all major sporting disciplines, Everything to Play For brings together the work of many of Ireland’s leading poets including Paul Durcan, Vona Groarke, Seamus Heaney, Rita Ann Higgins, Patrick Kavanagh, Brendan Kennelly, Michael Longley, Louis MacNeice, Sinéad Morrissey, Paul Muldoon, Enda Wyley, and many more.