The story of Ireland's travelling honours board - 'Not perfect, but good enough for us'

A spur-of-the moment idea from the team manager has become a beloved symbol of Ireland's Test history

Ireland’s makeshift honours board in the away dressing room at Lord’s. 📸: Chris Siddell

As Kevin O’Brien neared Ireland’s first Test match hundred, panic engulfed one member of the Irish backroom staff.

“Kev got to about 70. Jesus.”

Chris Siddell has been the Ireland team manager since 2015. Sids, as he known to players, recognised the magnitude of a centurion in the country’s first men’s Test.

The problem was, with the teams based in a set of prefabs next to the clubhouse at Malahide Cricket Club, traditional methods of marking the occasion were not available. Siddell had to improvise.

“There was no honours board or anything,” he recalls of that day in 2018. “I got a bit of corriboard, plastic, the same kind of stuff the election posters go up on. I went out the back with some of the events staff and we found a blank one, nothing on either side. ‘Right, I’m having that.’

“That day he [O’Brien] came in after getting his hundred, it was up there on the wall waiting. I’d love to take credit for it being a well-thought plan but it was one of them spur of the moment ideas, ‘What are we going to do if he gets another 30 runs here?’

“I was out the back working with some of the events people, keeping it quiet to myself. I didn’t want to be blamed if he got out in the 90s!”

On a whim, Ireland became the only Test nation with a portable honours board. Since O’Brien’s innings of 118 was recorded, that piece of corriboard has followed the Irish Test team, transported in the bottom of Siddell’s cricket bag alongside spare helmets and god knows what else.

Tim Murtagh was the next to see his name go up, his five wickets at Lord’s shocking England on the first day of the 2019 Test. “We actually had that board up in the Lord’s dressing room, we stuck it underneath the big official board,” said Siddell. “When Tim got his five-fer, I was lucky enough to write on the tape on the official Lord’s board and then we filled it in underneath on ours. I’ve got a great picture of Andy Balbirnie standing in front of the Lord’s board holding our board.

“That’s when we knew we had to take it around with us everywhere.”

Andy Balbirnie with the two honours boards. 📸: Chris Siddell

Sadly, that was to be the board’s last trip for some time. Irish players were forced into a four-year red ball hiatus, the pandemic and resulting governance decisions meaning Siddell’s piece of history had nowhere to go. It lived in his attic during the gap and is now housed in storage unit outside the Cricket Ireland offices with red ball back on the agenda.

When Tests returned in 2023, Lorcan Tucker, Andy McBrine, Curtis Campher and Paul Stirling all added their names. In 2024, Mark Adair took his first Test five-fer, followed by Matthew Humphreys at the start of 2025.

“We try and do it before they get off the field,” explains Siddell. “There’s been a couple of times we’ve had the name up but not the figures quite yet. We try and get it so as they come off the field, everyone already knows it’s up there waiting, you get your congratulations then at the end of the game we have a photo.”

When McBrine became the latest to have his name recorded, thanks to five wickets during the recent series against Bangladesh, a different milestone was reached. With 10 centuries or five-wicket hauls, Ireland’s makeshift board was full.

Fitting, perhaps, given a cricket stadium at Abbotstown was recently granted planning permission. Exploratory digs are already underway, with the first sod in the construction process to be turned during the coming months. Once Irish cricket gets a home of its own, a permanent honours board should be included in the plans. The country’s lone women’s Test five-fer, recorded by Isobel Joyce, also deserves inclusion.

It will be a few years before Abbotstown hosts a Test, leaving Siddell with the conundrum of where to record individual milestones in the interim period.

“I’ve got another similar piece of board,” he says. “I’m going to tape the piece to the bottom of it so it can go up on the wall bigger, then I’ll be able to fold it in half to go back into the cricket bag. That’s my plan but until someone gets 100, I’m going to have to wait and see.

“Guys are quietly proud of it. There’s always a comment, especially in the last few Tests, ‘Come on, let’s fill the board.’ Sometimes people joke, ‘Jeez, I’m not on that yet.’ It gives them a little bit of something to try and get on it. Hopefully it stays on for a long time, even if we get the stadium and we have an honours board in there, when we travel away we still take a temporary one for Test cricket.

"The Zimbabwe team once came into our changing room and spotted it. ‘Oh that’s nice.’ I guess a lot of teams play in permanent venues so they’d have their own inside the venue. You walk into the ground in Dhaka and they’ve got a list of all their Test players, all their ODI honours. We can’t do that so at least in Test cricket we’ve got something there.”

Ireland’s homeless honours board mimics the status of the sport. Full of achievement but hamstrung by infrastructure. Resting at the bottom of a cricket bag, this combination of plastic and sharpie (the physio’s alcohol wipes do the job should Siddell make a mistake) is arguably the most significant marker of the country’s modern cricketing history. Makeshift but beautiful.

Or, as the keeper of the board puts it: “It’s not perfect but it’s good enough for us.”

Ireland’s completed honours board in the changing room during the second Test in Mirpur. 📸: Chris Siddell

Ireland’s Test match honours board - in their own words

Kevin O’Brien: 118 vs Pakistan, Malahide 2018

KO’B: “It’s a proud thing for me to say I’m the first person on it. Test cricket to me means a lot. Growing up in Sandymount, myself and Niall watched Test cricket all the time on BBC and Channel 4. It was all Test cricket in the garden when we played each other.

“For me, Test cricket is the pinnacle of our sport. It tests every skill you have as a cricketer; mental, physical, tactical. It’s a cool concept and it’s great to see the list on the board is getting bigger and bigger every time the guys play.

“It’ll be great to see the permanent one when it’s up in Abbotstown, that will always be a proud thing for me to look at and show my kids when they’re older, they may understand how much it means to me and my family. It’s a nice bit of history that Sids carries around in his suitcase.”

Tim Murtagh: 5-13 vs England, Lord’s 2019

TM: “The board was a great idea, credit to Sids. Especially as we didn’t really have a home base to put something like that up on

“It was a special feeling being the first Irishman to take a five-fer in Tests and I’m glad there’s been plenty more since. Hopefully it gets put up permanently somewhere to commemorate the fine individual performances.”

Andrew McBrine: 6-118 vs Bangladesh, Mirpur 2023

AM: “I was 12th man for 2018, so I was there for Kev’s first 100. I remember Sids might have had it near enough his spot, it was 118 he got. We had our board underneath the Lord’s board in 2019, that was quite funny.

“They’ve got it completely full which shows we’ve done a lot of good things in Test match cricket. We had a gap between Lord’s and 2023 so it shows what we’ve done in the space of two years.

“Once that last wicket is taken and you walk into the changing room, you see your name is up on the board. He’s quick on it, Sids, so he is!

“It’s one thing you want to do. If you get on the board you’ve done something really well to contribute. It’s massive for the team.”

Lorcan Tucker (left) and Andy McBrine after their first inclusion on the board. 📸: Chris Siddell

Lorcan Tucker: 108 vs Bangladesh, Mirpur 2023

LT: “The first memory I have of the board was the Lord’s Test of 2019, it was the first Test squad that I’d been a part of. Obviously a special Test match but I explicitly remember Sids writing Murts’ name at lunch on day one.

“Fast forward to Dhaka 2023, I don’t think it was ever something that was possible or even would happen in my career, let alone playing Test cricket but getting a hundred… Outside of captaining my country it’s probably the proudest personal moment I’ve had in the game.

“Even looking at it now, despite some of the results we’ve had over the last few years, nearly every match you feel like someone is putting their name up on that board. I know Sids is running out of space so he’ll have to find a way to make it bigger. There’s no doubt there will be more names added in the near future.”

Paul Stirling: 103 vs Sri Lanka, Galle 2023

PS: “It is really special, we are looking for a permanent home eventually for it. Test cricket for me, the uncertainty of it when I started my career, for us to get it, then play in it, then actually go and score a hundred, it’s not the unlikeliest of achievements but the uncertainty makes it special for sure.

“I grew up believing the other [white ball] achievements were possible, if I got the best out of my potential, but scoring a Test match hundred I never really believed until I hit that ball to the boundary to bring it up.

“It’s the one format that’s really important for individual success to be celebrated. It’s so hard to win in five days, we’ve seen how hard it is for new teams in the Test sphere to get those wins. That makes it doubly important that it doesn’t have to be a win or result-based because the nature of the sport is so difficult in itself. We need to appreciate, win or lose, that we are building and have individual performances.

“The one thing missing from that board is a daddy hundred, a big score. Now it’s full, that 150+, maybe even a double, that’s glaring for a test cricketer in Ireland to go and achieve.”

Curtis Campher: 111 vs Sri Lanka, Galle 2023

CC: “My first recollection was the guys talking about the board in the sheds. Arriving in Dhaka, getting my first Test cap and then seeing in the changing room that Sids has the honours board. It was very cool to see the names up there.

“It wasn’t a thing I thought I would achieve. Lorcan got on it and Scra early doors in Dhaka, then in Sri Lanka it was up. It was pretty cool getting back into the sheds, scoring a 100 in Galle, seeing my name etched up there.

“No one can ever take that away from you. The more Test matches I play and the more understanding I have of how hard it is to score a 100 in Test cricket, how hard it is to graft those milestones, the more I appreciate it.

“I remember being really in the zone, in the bubble, grinding away. I knew when I got into the 90s, I said to myself, ‘If you’re going to be aggressive then back yourself.’ I was nervous on 98, 99, facing spin, but when the seamer came on, it was tough to get under a few bumpers. It was very satisfying, let out a big roar. It was very cool to do something for the team.”

Mark Adair: 5-39 vs Afghanistan, Abu Dhabi 2024

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Matthew Humphreys: 6-57 vs Zimbabwe, Bulawayo 2025

Matthew Humprheys celebrates his first Test five-wicket haul in Bulawayo. 📸: Chris Siddell

MH: “Especially as I had been out of the team for a while before I took those wickets in Zim, coming in and seeing your name up on the board is pretty cool. Especially alongside some of the big names in Ireland’s short Test cricket history. Obviously there’s been a long road to get Test cricket for Ireland, there have been so many guys along the way who never got to play who contributed massively to it.

“Every Test week we talk about filling up Sids’ board with milestones. It’s cool sitting in the changing room, looking at the board and remembering the days that we’ve had. There’s a special sort of camaraderie in Test cricket, those weeks you’ve had wherever they are in the world. It’s pretty cool.”

Matthew Humphreys: 5-170 vs Bangladesh Sylhet, 2025

Andrew McBrine: 6-109 vs Bangladesh, Mirpur 2025