Gin and done it

He’s delivered a few champagne performances in his time but it was a bottle of Eimear’s Wish Gin that Brian McKiernan departed Solitude with yesterday.

Arranged to heighten awareness of the charity’s Stem Cell Donor campaign, supporters attending Cliftonville’s Danske Bank Premiership fixture with Glentoran were presented with free entry to the draw and Brian – who scored 16 goals in 106 appearances for the Reds between 1980-85 – was the man with the golden ticket.

Cliftonville Football Club were once again humbled to play our part in supporting the ongoing hard work of the team behind Eimear’s Wish.

Eimear Smyth was a Belfast woman who was diagnosed with stage two Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, a type of blood cancer, in September 2016 and who sadly passed away at the age of 25 from complications relating to a donor cell stem transplant in 2019.

In her memory, Eimear’s family have continued to campaign for those with life-threatening illnesses by raising awareness of cell stem donation and, having first highlighted their story in the summer of 2019, Cliftonville FC were only too pleased to assist her father Sean with the launch of the current programme earlier this year.

You can join the Stem Cell Donor registry, or donate money to the cause, today at anthonynolan.org and dkms.org.uk.