{"id":180696,"date":"2025-12-08T08:09:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T08:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/180696\/"},"modified":"2025-12-08T08:09:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T08:09:08","slug":"conor-mckeon-what-happens-when-conor-mcgregors-blackforge-fc-face-an-english-over-35-sunday-league-side-featuring-stephen-ireland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/180696\/","title":{"rendered":"Conor McKeon: What happens when Conor McGregor\u2019s Blackforge FC face an English over-35 Sunday league side featuring Stephen Ireland?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Wythenshawe's Stephen Ireland in action during the charity match against Blackforge FC in Baldonnell. Photo: Frank McGrath\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/2a69a895-5e04-4c80-8309-bd353e27a4a1.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)\">Wythenshawe&#8217;s Stephen Ireland in action during the charity match against Blackforge FC in Baldonnell. Photo: Frank McGrath<\/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)\">\u201cThere\u2019s Emile Heskey,\u201d says the man on the gate. \u201cJaysus, he looks much older, doesn\u2019t he? He must be nearly, what, 60 by now?\u201d<\/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)\">Heskey, the 47-year-old former Liverpool and England striker, is wearing one of those long quilted manager jackets that go down to your lower shin, the sort Arsene Wenger inadvertently invented internet memes with a decade ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wythenshawe&#8217;s Stephen Ireland in action during the charity match against Blackforge FC in Baldonnell. Photo: Frank McGrath \u201cThere\u2019s&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":180697,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1714,7277,61,60,112],"class_list":{"0":"post-180696","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-conor-mcgregor","9":"tag-conor-mckeon","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/180697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}