Paul McCrum is remembered as the cricketer who broke the mould, the first local player - along with his brother Charlie - in the NCU to switch clubs for money.

Thirty years on, he describes it as the winter of discontent.

Controversy may have followed McCrum through his nomadic career - he played for no fewer than 10 clubs - but there was no denying he deserved all his 74 Ireland caps and he more than paid his way for his various employers.

Some would say he was ahead of his time and the 57-year-old, unsurprisingly, says that the current Ireland contracted players deserve every penny they receive.

McCrum can only watch the Ireland team from afar, having emigrated to the United States in 2010, but admits he is as "cricket-mad" as ever.

"I can watch the games on Willow TV and I dance round the living room, still bowling balls with them. It's great how far the team has come. Unfortunately my son, Hansie (15) has grown up in America so doesn't really know cricket and plays soccer (not football!).

And yes, he was named after Hansie Cronje, who may have been disgraced for his involvement in a betting scandal in 2000 but who, McCrum admits, "made a huge impact on me for all the right reasons (when he played with him in the Ireland side in 1997). He repented and was forgiven. It was appropriate to name my son after him."

Decker Curry and Hansie Cronje celebrate after Ireland beat Middlesex in 1997

His wife's job took the McCrum family to Texas and these days he is enjoying the high-life in a "fast-growing town called Prosper (population 29,000) in the northern suburbs of Dallas, pretty much detached from the protests following the killing of George Floyd last month.

So in the country where Black Lives Matter is so prominent, what is life really like?

"As a director with a few companies (in oil and gas) I've travelled to 31 states so I have a really good finger on the pulse. Of course I came from a conflict which was always there and saw it in various guises. Around us here, it's a very diverse society but it is very polarised, red or blue, Democrat or Republican and a huge chasm in between," he says.

"The country is about 50-50 and the undertones are concerning. In the last couple of weeks I've got a fresh look at the country and it wouldn't take much to kick off in a major way."

It's all a far cry from McCrum's days growing up in Waringstown, a member of the (under-15) side which won the Graham Cup, alongside Robbie and Davy Dennison and Garfield Harrison and in the opposition was another future international team-mate, Jim Patterson of Downpatrick. But it was three miles down the road at Lurgan where McCrum played eight of the first nine years of his senior career.

The Lurgan side with one of their three Irish Senior Cups

"I went to Lurgan College and when I wasn't getting a game at Waringstown, a friend said 'come and play for Lurgan'; my first game was for the Fourths v Shorts!

"I made my senior debut, ironically, against Waringstown, a two-nighter in Lurgan Park when I batted 11, faced one ball from Garfield and didn't bowl."

After two seasons at Pollock Park, he took the opportunity to return to Waringstown and although he opened the bowling in virtually every match and the Villagers won the Irish Senior Cup at their first attempt, "I didn't enjoy it one bit".

"I didn't feel I had the freedom I was afforded at Lurgan", he adds, so after one year (when Waringstown also beat Lurgan in the Challenge Cup final, remembered for Davy Dennison's 137) it was back to Lurgan where they became one of the top teams in the country, winning two Irish Cups and the NCU Challenge Cup."

The move to North Down followed in 1990 - "Imagine getting paid play cricket", he says - but it was a one-season wonder before he returned to Waringstown and the "best club team ever".

"We won the treble in 1992, we had six internationals and Neil Carson would go on to be one. I would match that team against anyone from any era."

The following year, McCrum was man of the match in another Challenge Cup victory "and I got Charles out in both innings although he says he didn't nick one and the other was missing".

By this stage McCrum was a regular Ireland international but that career would be interrupted in 1994 as Paul, now back at North Down, took another stance.

"I was asked by the selectors before the first game that summer if I would be available for the whole summer. I told them what Charles and I were earning at North Down and said 'are you going to cover what we are contracturally getting at North Down?' They said 'no' so we said 'we're not available'."

Paul and Charlie McCrum

It was Ireland's first professional coach Mike Hendrick who tempted McCrum back, at the age of 33. After the 1995 Irish Cup final, my last game for North Down (and his 11th cup final - he lost only one) when I got man of the match, Hendo said "I would really like you to come back to the nets, into the fold."

"I adore Hendo, would run through a brick wall for him. He's my type of guy, you just had to work hard. Yes, Mike was huge for me. I'm a fan."

In his first match back, he had figures of 2-10 from 10 overs against Hampshire.

"The first over went for an edged four and two singles and I then bowled nine overs for four runs and two wickets, including Robin Smith, first ball."

McCrum played every major Ireland match for the next two years as they won the Triple Crown and European Championship, finished fourth at the World Cup qualifiers and beat a county for the first time in the Benson & Hedges Cup.

Paul McCrum bowling to Gehan Mendis

It was in 1997 that McCrum first met Cronje, an introduction that is still vivid in his memory.

"It was a Sunday afternoon in the Grand Hotel, Malahide. Practice had been cancelled and Hendo walked in and introduced him to the squad. He said he was 'thrilled to be here and my aim is to win three games (against counties in the B&H Cup). If you do that, I wil dye my hair blond!' So he immediately gave us belief."

Ireland duly beat Middlesex the following day, the first victory over a county in a one-day game and McCrum and Cronje became good friends.

"Hansie, like myself, was a fitness fanatic and if you remember that season, we played in Cardiff and it snowed on the first day of the game and it was carried over. Hansie challenged me to a lap of Sophia Gardens and he destroyed me, but then he made a mistake and challenged me to a rematch on the treadmill, and I won that easily."

The South African captain then helped the Ireland international get a job as a development coach in South Africa for the following three winters and McCrum was in talks with Orange Free State to become their assistant coach in 2000 until the betting scandal took that off the table.

"Hansie was a Shakesperian tragedy," is McCrum's summing up. Paul's international career ended in 1998, a month before his 36th birthday, when he took two wickets against South Africa at Downpatrick, the first, irony of ironies, being that of Hansie Cronje.

"I had decided in conjunction with Hendo that I wanted to retire at the Commonweath Games (with the Northern Ireland team in September 1998). I played one game, against South Africa, and was thrilled to do that. My last wicket was Jacques Kallis c Heasley b McCrum but Eagy (Ryan Eagleson) and Cookie (Gordon Cooke) were sensational, as they were against Bangladesh when we won, so I knew I had made the right decision. It was time to pass the mantle.

Paul McCrum with yet another Irish Senior Cup

"I genuinely treasure those memories. Do they mean much in the big scale of life? Probably not, but I was privileged to be part of it and to have known those guys and played alongside them."

"I've taken a lot of photographs down the years and kept press clippings and I hope someone in Irish cricket opens a museum. I would love to donate my photographs and press clippings, which are currently in boxes."

Looking back it was the best of times for McCrum and he insists he has no regrets.

"It's not that anyone was going to get rich from the money we were paid. Sometimes you have to speculate and go out on a limb. Hopefully when people think back they will think of me fondly, as I do of them."