{"id":4570,"date":"2025-08-17T09:24:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-17T09:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/4570\/"},"modified":"2025-08-17T09:24:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-17T09:24:09","slug":"colin-oriordans-australian-tale-of-the-unexpected-afl-was-only-the-beginning-of-a-great-adventure-for-tipperary-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/4570\/","title":{"rendered":"Colin O\u2019Riordan\u2019s Australian tale of the unexpected \u2013 AFL was only the beginning of a great adventure for Tipperary man"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Former Tipperary dual star Colin O'Riordan in his lead role with the Sydney Swans academy where he heads a programme for over 700 AFL hopefuls\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/67a79ac3-75c9-4d0a-9ced-97c80557e123.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Former Tipperary dual star Colin O&#8217;Riordan in his lead role with the Sydney Swans academy where he heads a programme for over 700 AFL hopefuls<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">When he boarded a flight to Australia a decade ago, Colin O\u2019Riordan had big ambitions. But professional sport, as he found out, has a way of veering you off course and he\u2019s had to adapt accordingly.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">The Tipperary native was one of the most talented young Gaelic footballers of his generation, a minor All-Ireland winner in both codes and good enough to make both senior panels. Then the Sydney Swans came calling and offered him a different life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Tipperary dual star Colin O&#8217;Riordan in his lead role with the Sydney Swans academy where he heads&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4571,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[18,19,17,4934,132,4935],"class_list":{"0":"post-4570","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-ruaidhri-oconnor","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-tipperary-gaa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4570\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}