{"id":679500,"date":"2026-01-07T08:18:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T08:18:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/679500\/"},"modified":"2026-01-07T08:18:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T08:18:14","slug":"northern-ireland-football-ian-baraclough-admits-he-is-fortunate-not-to-have-been-paralysed-by-horror-accident","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/679500\/","title":{"rendered":"Northern Ireland football: Ian Baraclough admits he is fortunate not to have been paralysed by horror accident"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Ian Baraclough has returned to his job as Partick Thistle's sporting director\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/inpho_01981616.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_caption1 beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_secondary beltel-66f0fec7_regular beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_marginleft0 beltel-1d70522a_marginright0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop3 beltel-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Ian Baraclough has returned to his job as Partick Thistle&#8217;s sporting director<\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_primary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop0 beltel-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Former Northern Ireland manager Ian Baraclough has given a positive update on his recovery from a horrific freak accident during his honeymoon in Mauritius and has backed Michael O\u2019Neill\u2019s side to stun Italy and keep their World Cup dream alive.<\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_primary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop0 beltel-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Just two days after he married his long-term partner Alexia in June last year, the 55-year-old was hospitalised after being slammed into the sand by a wave.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ian Baraclough has returned to his job as Partick Thistle&#8217;s sporting director Former Northern Ireland manager Ian Baraclough&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":679501,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5011],"tags":[8544,150039,1144,8538,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-679500","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-northern-ireland","8":"tag-graham-luney","9":"tag-ian-baraclough","10":"tag-northern-ireland","11":"tag-northern-ireland-football-team","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115852837165903772","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=679500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/679501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=679500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=679500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=679500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}