Keith Earls: ‘Hank started to take over. I got to a stage where I hated rugby’

“Hank has popped up every now and then,” Keith Earls says with a wry smile when I ask if he is still haunted by the dark side of his character. Earls has won 96 caps for Ireland but his fiercest battle as a rugby player has been with bipolar disorder. The 34-year-old, who has played 186 games for Munster since his debut in 2007, calls his destructive alter-ego “Hank”. It echoes the way in which, in Me, Myself & Irene, Jim Carrey played the part of a state trooper who, after a mental breakdown, developed a different personality called Hank.

“But I have a lot more good days than bad days,” Earls says at home in Limerick. “A couple of years ago I probably had one good day a month. Bipolar could affect me for weeks but now it’s one or two bad days every few months. But sometimes I get confident and say: ‘Look, I’m better. It’s all OK now.’ I fall into bad habits and all of a sudden your man Hank is back again.

“This season I opened a coffee roaster business in Limerick and I don’t like too much going on in my head. It can create havoc. So, setting that up, I found it tough. Now it’s important because the coffee business helps me relax and I know there’s something for me after rugby. But Hank pops up whenever my mind is cluttered or I’m knocked out of my routine.”

Earls is open and brave and he admits that “Hank the bastard is still lurking around, always looking to become a lodger in my head again.”

That arresting line comes from his compelling autobiography which paints a vivid picture of all the obstacles Earls has overcome. He grew up in Limerick’s close-knit but sometimes dangerous neighbourhood of Moyross. As a working-class man it has taken him years to adjust to rugby’s privileged world. He felt embarrassed by his