In The Glen of Aherlow pub on Emmet Road in Inchicore, Dublin, last year, a regular reminded me of a looming centenary. “Next December, Con’s a hundred.” Con, of course, was sportswriter Con Houlihan. Despite his death in 2012, his first name is enough for many people to immediately recall him.

The pub was part of Houlihan’s beat, on the way back from a pilgrimage to Richmond Park, where he noted the good people of Inchicore had followed their local side “through thin and thinner”. Houlihan’s returning path often brought him to The Old Royal Oak in Kilmainham Lane. The walk, he would write, “is like a piece of the country in the heart of the city. It has green spaces and hedges and trees and there you can hear the birds sing. There, too, you will find a little pub which from the outside looks like a private house”.

It would be difficult to spend an afternoon in Dublin publand without encountering a memorial to Houlihan. At Mulligan’s on Poolbeg Street, a secular shrine of sorts was unveiled in his own lifetime, including the words of his friend John B Keane, who noted that the men had played rugby against each other and drank pints of porter together. They were good at one and excelled at the other. In the nearby Palace Bar on Fleet Street, a bust behind the bar honours the Castle Island (two words, he insisted) writer. Some memorials are humbler, such as a picture in Chaplin’s on Hawkins Street or a framed magazine cover