Hello there and welcome to the return of Tony Cascarino to an Irish man abroad. You may remember if you're a long-time listener that back in 2013, Tony came on for episode six of this podcast when I was fresh as a daisy, my first ever footballer on the show, a hero of mine as a child. And we talked about

everything, his whole life story right from the very beginning, from going from being a

builder to playing for Gillingham, Millwall, Aston Villa, Celtic, Chelsea, Marseilles, and of course

Ireland. But I forgot to hit record for the first five minutes of that chat.

What I didn't realize in long with not being able to hit record was that with Tony

Cascarino, what you get is the unvarnished truth right from the start.

And he just went for it in that first five minutes and told us about this complicated situation with his nationality

that he found himself in where realities of his past and his family heritage were revealed to him

late in life. How other players encouraged him not to come out and not say anything, but he

couldn't do it. And as a result, felt like a fraud for a very long time.

Unfortunately, I hadn't hit record, so we lost it.

I'm happy to say today, we get it back.

I sit down with Tony here, and in the second half of this interview,

we really dig into what exactly happened there.

Not before we get 30 minutes of reflection on

Jack Charlton, the state of football today and lots, lots more. It's all here in this Tony

Cascarino interview, but to hear the second half of it, you have to come to patreon.com.com

forward slash Irishman abroad. That's how we keep

the show afloat. That's how we stay weekly and how we've managed to produce this show over the

last three difficult years. It doesn't cost much about the price of two fancy coffees,

depending on where you're buying them. But I really do appreciate it. If you come on over there, you're the

lifeblood of the show. But if this is what you want, the first half of this interview, you're in

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