The
Ireland and Munster wing has opened up about his bipolar disorder in a book almost as remarkable as the rugby career he has managed to forge while living with it
![Keith Earls: ‘Hank started to take over. I got to a stage where I hated rugby’](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/e99abd57e0b256d959502fbbdff6c1ba2fed5971/0_1137_3200_1920/master/3200.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=a2d6f866ae031eeca6b462830c147889)
“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.