The Eamon Dunphy Interview: 'I wanted to tell the story of the life of an ordinary footballer'
You’ve come over to Eamon Dunphy’s house in Ranelagh to talk about the 40th anniversary and another reprint of Only A Game? But this being Dunphy and politics dominating the news agenda, invariably you end up having a chat about a lot more than Only A Game? and only sport.
He was out canvassing before the election. For the Independent Alliance. Not just in Dublin with his old friend Shane Ross, but as far as Sligo where a Marie Casserly — “a teacher, a community worker, not a professional politician, an excellent candidate” — ran. And if at first it strikes you as a bit strange, that a now 70-year-old Dunphy would travel across the country to knock on doors for someone you’d never heard of (Casserly would muster just 4.4% of first preferences), you later learn there’s a reason why. There’s still a fire, even an anger, in the man.
Already this morning he’s been out and got the papers: the Irish Examiner (“the best paper around now, for its intelligence and radicalism and sport”) and The Mail (“it’s very good on English soccer — little else”) and there’s a column in the latter whose more right-wing views have him spit out a spate of expletives.
When he was last on television for something other than sport, he welled up. It was on a Christmas show, presented by Ivan Yates. When asked what he wanted for Christmas and the New Year, he wished for something to alleviate the plight of the homeless. You ask him is it rooted in the fact that he and his family were almost evicted when he was a boy. “I think it should be rooted in everyone,” he says.
“I mean, kids in a hotel, trapped in a room. Sometimes in those places you’re f***d out at nine in the morning and have to walk the streets all day. You might have to take your child to school on a bus an hour away, then go back to the hotel with your other child, then go back to the school again. For f***’s sake! Of course we can do something about it. Build houses that people can afford!”
He no longer writes a non-sports column. He felt he’d got to a stage where he had nothing else to say, at least for then. Besides, his options are now limited, he says. “The last occasion I worked on radio, I defended Sam Smyth when he lost his radio show and his column because he was not obliging the Denis O’Brien agenda.
“The only other journalistic outlet who said anything else about it was The Phoenix. If you fall out with Denis O’Brien, that blocks off Independent Newspapers and two national radio stations. There’s not a lot else work around.”
He’s still writing though. He’s slowly getting around to the second volume of his memoirs, following the well-received The Rocky Road that came out the Christmas before last. It’ll take another few years to complete. Writing, he finds, is a torturous process, all the more so because he still writes his copy out in long hand; his laptop is for emails and miscellaneous tasks only.
But he will write it. He can still write, as The Rocky Road proved. There’s just so much to cover post-1990 from where he left off. He has a provisional title for it, though one he’ll probably ditch: Wrong About Everything.
“I think this next one will be a lot funnier. It’ll be centred around the Unicorn [plush restaurant], the champagne, helicopters, private jets, and the whole Celtic Tiger and how I was lapping it up!”
Did you ride the Celtic Tiger, Eamon? Did I what, baby!
“I think I believed in it. I mean, the full employment was a magical thing. I thought that we’d... cracked it. Everyone has a few bob. Everyone is able to stay and work at home. The one obvious concern was the price of housing and seeing my kids involved in that, but my radar was switched off.
“I remember writing a column for The Mail on Sunday about Bertie [Ahern]. He’d brokered the EU enlargement treaty that had defied everyone else, he was about to become Taoiseach for a third time, so I raved about this modest, political genius from Drumcondra. It’s shameful! If anyone were to dig it out now: ‘For f***’s sake, Eamon — get out of town, baby, will ya?!’”
He’s gone right across the political spectrum, supporting and then criticising nearly them all. He voted PDs for a while. Fine Gael during the Garret era. He was scathing of Gerry Adams and John Hume at the start of their peace talks, because at the time there was no peace, but he’s happy and humble enough to say that history will judge them kindly, as he now himself does. But some other sacred cows he took on in his columns, he feels vindicated. He wasn’t wrong about everything, he says.
“I think in the case of Mary Robinson I was spot on. Look at her grandiose life since the Presidency and this museum she’s building to herself in Mayo at the cost of the state! Nobody’s writing about it now. I would if I was writing.
“It’s not always about being right. It’s about expressing an honest opinion. The reader might not agree with you but they’ll say ‘Mmm... maybe.’ That’s the job of a columnist: to be thought-provoking.”
It’s striking just how vividly and keenly he still feels and recalls his career and journalism through the ‘90s and noughties; you would have thought it might have been all a haze now. And that his commentary on Ireland isn’t just playing to the galleries. There were no cameras on the doorsteps of Sligo.
“I haven’t changed in terms of my radicalism,” he says. “That is as strong an impulse with me as it ever was.” 40 years after writing a book that only a rebel could have written.
I believe the good pro was the true hero of professional sport. He is not necessarily a great player, or even the best player in the team, although he can be both. His goodness has to do not just with his talent but also with his spiritual state... He may not be ‘what the game is about’, but his integrity, his nobility of spirit, his dedication to duty and his commitment to cause are what the game was largely about for this journeyman pro. Eamon Dunphy’s foreword for the second edition of Only A Game?
‘Eamon Dunphy’s diary is the best and most authentic memoir by a professional footballer about his sport that I have yet read.’ Brian Glanville
How do you feel about the book being 40 years old and reprinted again?
It’s amazing, that a simple little book like that still exists in print. And it’s nice. Although I wrote a far better book on Matt Busby [A Strange Kind of Glory]. But the publisher took it out of print, partly because United were very hostile about it.
They wouldn’t put it in their shop unless they took something like 95 percent of the profit. Good ol’ Man U! [Laughs] But it’s a book I’m proud of. It and ‘The Last Word’. The rest of it [his career] has been a waste of time! [Laughs]
What books had you in mind when you said “Football books of that time were notoriously bland. Tales of glory and dreams fulfilled... nothing about the brutality of the game” that the book [Only A Game?] set out to convey?
Ah, they were all bland, they were awful: Stanley Matthews and all the great players: ‘My Life.’ You knew that they had some rich stories but some hack would plonk a tape recorder in front of them and only want the fairytales, and never ask or talk about the appalling things that were happening.
It’s an old phrase in journalism, almost a cliché but so true: Tell the story as it is. With no frills, no makey-uppy fairytales, and in plain English. I mean, nobody was going to publish a book by Eamon Dunphy: My Ten Greatest Games or The Day I played in The Wembley Cup final. It would have to be a book about failure, disappointments.
Why did you want to write it?
I wanted to tell the story of the life of an ordinary footballer, so that kids who dreamed about being footballers would understand that this is what it really is. It’s not the fairytale. There’s going to be pain and insecurity. And all that insecurity is in the book.
So the 28-year-old vet at Millwall, what does that Eamon Dunphy tell the 15-year-old Eamon Dunphy that’s getting offers from Man United and Liverpool as you were?
I’d be saying ‘Go to Liverpool!’ [Laughs] No, the thing that was important was that you were unprepared for anything after football. So what I did when I was playing, long before I wrote the book, was agitate for young footballers to be educated and given an education. A trade. An alternative. In the players’ union (PFA), in the club, against the club. I actually set up in south London the first prototype education scheme that the PFA later adopted for the whole country.
Yourself and John Giles had a similar vision with the Shamrock Rovers project when you returned here.
Yeah. We were idealistic. Make sure the kids went to school after training, in case football went pear-shaped. Because the point of Only A Game? was to show that this is a perilous life. Only one in 10 who get signed make anything. And even if you were to make it, you still wouldn’t have anything in those days at 35, even if you were Bobby Charlton.
The word ‘journeyman’ is bandied about a lot, and often with a sense of derision. But in many ways the journeyman has ‘made it’. Playing the game professionally, winning the next contract, still living the ‘dream’, though as you’d illustrate, it’s not. Do you look back with any sense of pride on your playing career, the longevity of it?
Well, I do look back with pride on the effort I put in and the fact I survived though I was a stone lighter than any other footballer in England. The Rothmans Football Book would come out every year and would have the weight and height of every player. I was 9st 4. The next lightest player was 10st 4.
What’s striking now is that the view then was that’s all you were ever going to be. And that that’s how you viewed yourself. While now it would be ‘Hey, let’s strengthen you up.’ You’d be on a programme.
Oh yeah, it would have been much different. They’d have stopped me smoking and going into betting shops and eating shite in the digs!
Could you see how it would have made you a better footballer?
Yeah. I was a very, very technically good player, but didn’t have the upper body strength that you need to get to the top. I was nearly good enough to be a Premier League/First Division quality player. But that awareness [that strength could be developed] wasn’t there. Until Arsene Wenger came along the English game was very primitive.
The scene towards the end of the book between yourself and the manager, Benny Fenton. You’ve had a difficult season but he drives you over to Theo Foley who is looking to sign you for Charlton. Benny says ‘You know I’ve never done you any harm.’ He guarantees you a testimonial. But you don’t say what you thought about that, even that gesture of driving you over.
Well, I thought that it was kind, but I wanted to play in the first team. That’s the reason I left United. I wanted to be in the first team. No one pushed me out of United.
When did you last see Benny?
I don’t think I ever saw him again. Ah, Benny, God love him. Benny was great. A very refined man, very intelligent. And he believed in playing a style of football which was not the Millwall tradition. He was a remarkable man, really.
Is the portrayal of him in the book a fair one?
No. It isn’t. It’s not fair to him. But I was writing about myself rather than him and at that time in my career he was the bane of my life. And what you feel at the moment is not always the truth, because it is informed by passions and emotions. Later when I wrote the foreword to the second edition I reflected more fondly and fairer on him. You have to have that capacity to rationalise and reflect, which I have. Hence, Wrong About Everything!
You’ve spoken quite a bit about what kind of player you were. What kind of teammate were you?
Ah, good. I was up at the back of the bus with the lads [laughs]. Smoking, drinking my bottle of beer, acting the maggot. That’s the sort of person I am. I’m not a goody-goody.
And I was never a boss’s man. I never met a nice boss, with a few exceptions.
Aengus Fanning [Sunday Independent]. Tim O’Connor [RTÉ]. Probably Benny. That’s about it. I think a certain type of people go for power. And most of them are assholes.
Going back to what kind of teammate you were. There’s a passage in The Rocky Road where after Reading have won promotion, you confront the manager, Charlie Hurley, about not fighting to increase the players’ wages. You namecheck teammates. “What about Geoff Barker?”
Well, I could have swallowed it. It cost me my career, at the end, because Charlie said ‘F*** you.’ But I think I was right. I wasn’t trying to be sanctimonious but Geoff Barker was a real rock solid journeyman and he was going to be shafted. Charlie said, ‘You take the few bob, f*** him.’ I said ‘No thanks.’ So we went to war. I think that’s the way to be. I was always like that, even when push came to shove.
Just thinking of the time you wore the black armband playing in England the weekend after Bloody Sunday. No other Irish player joined you in protest. Where did that independent streak come from?
It came from the belief that this is the right thing to do right now and take the consequences. And the karma. I believe in karma. So you take the hit. I’ve taken a lot of hits — walked out of Independent Newspapers, Today FM, Newstalk... You could say I was mad, which people do, but I’m not mad.
What passages of the book are referenced back to you most?
Things like the kids [apprentices] getting f***d out and I was trying to help them. I think people see it as that’s the way it is. I mean, almost everyone I’ve met has read it, football people. And fans, lovers, of the game. It was for them. The game is about them. Not the journalists or the directors and sometimes not even the players — players can be greedy and selfish and vain.
I always see myself as I described it in The Rocky Road: going to football and hurling games with me Da and brother. I always identify with that person.
That is who I work for, now and forever. I am that same person. I am not like the other guys who are on television. I am different in that I have total empathy with that person who is looking forward to the match tonight. I know what it means for a kid to follow a team. That’s where my heart is, and that’s where my mind is. As a journalist, what’s right for the viewer, what’s right for the reader? They’re paying my wages.
I’m not working for anyone else than them. F*** the boss. Because no boss ever came up to me, put his arm around me and said, ‘Eamon, I think you’re f***ing wonderful! Here’s a load of money!’ [Laughs]
They come up to me because they think I might sell newspapers. The readers and viewers might like me. The bosses don’t like me. They just don’t. I don’t give a f***. As long as people enjoy the copy or the programmes.
An interesting aspect of The Rocky Road was your interest and flair for coaching. You’d the highest score in the FA course in Lilleshall. The director Allen Wade raved about your sessions. You had a successful stint with London University where the likes of Bobby Robson started out.
That was my vocation. And I never got there.
Did the Shamrock Rovers experience hurt you that much?
No. I couldn’t get a job in England. And I was a very good coach. I understood the game. I understood what a morning’s training session should be.
Empathy for people is very important. That was what [Alex] Ferguson had. You have to understand the players you have. You can’t go in there with a rigid blueprint like [Giovanni] Trapattoni or this eejit [Louis] Van Gaal and find it doesn’t suit the players you have. You have to be flexible and pragmatic.
I understood that and would have been good at it. But if you are a rebel, a radical, and you want change, these guys won’t give you a job.
But you say you loved coaching. Did you ever think of taking an underage team at Cherry Orchard or Home Farm, the way plenty of former GAA stars take the local U10s and U14s?
Yeah, if I had been in a community, with a secure job. But I didn’t have the time because I was always trying to make my way. Especially starting out in journalism, as a freelance. It’s a bloody hard game. It’s a 24/7 thing. It takes an awful lot out of me when I’m going full on. I didn’t have the bloody energy to do anything else!
— Eamon Dunphy, Only A Game? (1976)
Eamon Dunphy on Glenn Whelan (2013)
Glenn Whelan on Eamon Dunphy (2013)
What would Eamon Dunphy the coach have made of Eamon Dunphy the pundit?
Probably a pain in the arse! But the thing is you’re not there to serve Martin O’Neill or any other coach or manager.
You’re there to do your analysis and to look at what’s wrong as much as what’s right. An analyst can’t be a cheerleader. What these guys want are cheerleaders. I see Martin O’Neill used the RTÉ [annual sports] awards as a platform to shaft us. Wrongly, because I said after the Scotland game that we could still qualify because Scotland still had to go to Georgia. But he took the opportunity to have a cheapshot at us, saying we hadn’t a clue.
But it could be said that when you and Giles started out, you weren’t long out of playing and coaching the game, the cutting edge, being responsible for a result.
That there are reasons that managers do what they do and it’s a long time now since ye last had to produce a result?
Well, I think we have to get a result all the time. We’re up against ITV, Sky, BBC. We batter them. That’s our result.
Do you still think it’s far more insightful than the rest?
Ah, it’s different class. I’m watching BT; Jesus! Jamie Carragher, Gary Neville, they brought something to punditry in England. [Graeme] Souness is excellent. But Thierry Henry and Niall Quinn? For f***’s sake! And you can quote me on that. Thierry Henry ison £2 million a year, just sitting there as a tailor’s dummy.
What would Eamon Dunphy the player make of Eamon Dunphy the pundit?
I don’t know.
Is Glenn Whelan not in many ways Eamon Dunphy the player?!
Ha! (Laughs) Maybe! He probably hates me, but as long as he has the comfort of driving one of his two Ferraris... I think I was a better player than Glenn Whelan. Better technically.
But is he not the embodiment of a good pro?
He probably is a good pro, and that’s how he’s had such a good career. He’s still playing on a solid Stoke team. Is he a good fit for the Irish team? No. This is where we get to the crux of it. I am not offering definitive proof. I am offering an assessment. That’s what a good analyst should do. Giles, Brady, Neville, Souness or me: what we’re saying is ‘In my view this would be better if he wasn’t there and someone else was.’
That would be fair enough, but when you then say he’s a terrible player...
I’ve said I was a bit too harsh. But I don’t think he’s good enough. To start for Ireland. I’ve watched whole games of Stoke and never taken my eye off Glenn Whelan. I’ve watched whole games of Ireland and never taken my eyes off James McCarthy. For 90 minutes! John’s the same and he doesn’t disagree with my view. Because we played the game and know what to look for in a way a journalist wouldn’t be able to do. John has done some brilliant analysis of McCarthy. And I did some analysis of PSG the other week, showing the directness of their play in midfield, how they’re always looking for the positive pass forward. It would totally apply to those two players.
Don’t forget, they’re earning great money. And hey, look at the criticism I’ve shipped over the years? F*** me! Massive newspaper campaigns about my drinking — which were untrue. I see those guys [who wrote it] and I never say ‘What did you say about me?!’ I say ‘Hey guys!’ [Laughs] I’m subject to rigorous scrutiny as well — and to the sack. And a player is like that. So how Martin O’Neill on a million quid a year feels he’s above such scrutiny...
You were also highly critical of a fellow former Millwall player, Mick McCarthy. But wasn’t he as well the embodiment of the good pro?
He was a good pro. And he’s proved himself to be a very good pro as a manager. I said when the [Ireland] job came up that he should have been right in the frame for it. So I’ve given Mick McCarthy due credit over the years.
I was severely critical of him as a player, and the context of that was he was keeping David O’Leary out of the team. And David O’Leary was a better player than Mick McCarthy by a distance.
So you felt he was good to have in a squad but only as back-up. But you didn’t exactly put it like that. It came across more cutting and personal than that. And maybe there were other dynamics within the squad that only a manager and the players can know and be privy to. That it’s one thing being a better player; another being a better teammate...
Well, David O’Leary was a good enough teammate for a very good Arsenal team for nearly 20 years. He was scandalously exiled by Jack for three years. I was friendly with Jack up to that. Very friendly. But that’s the way the cookie crumbles. I wasn’t working for Jack.
Like a lot of your viewers, I was a child of the ‘80s. Grew up on Platini and Maradona and the famous ‘A good player, not a great player’ assessments. But did you ever think of saying “Look, he’s not a great player — yet. He could be. We’ll see at this tournament, in this game...” Instead of seeming as if you were scathing of some of the top players in the game?
Rigour is the key word when it comes to analysis and criticism and talking about greatness. Rigour. There is a standard and if you keep hyping players up as great, you’re doing a disservice to the great players who truly were. You’re devaluing the word.
But if you’re just doing it to be provocative, people will find you out.
What do you make of Joe Brolly’s punditry?
I think he acts the bollix.
That he’s overdoing it?
Yeah. I don’t listen to him now.
But you must have liked or rated him at some point?
What he did with his kidney, I have huge respect for that and admire the man. But you see, when you’re in the public eye... Joe is playing up to it.
What about you? Do you ever think “If I say this here, the likes of balls.ie will pick it up, Twitter will love it”?
No. It just comes out. It just comes out!
Would you like to take some of it back?
If you’re on television coming up on 38 years and you haven’t had a few f***-ups.... I’d be doing a lot more wrong. I don’t mind.
How’s the panel, post-Bill, Eamon?
Well, we miss Bill because he was a great journalist and broadcaster and he brought a huge amount to it. Darragh [Moloney] is a very good broadcaster. Excellent. If you compare him to the muppets on the English channels, he’s different class.
It’s important to make that point, that there’s no disrespect to Darragh. But Bill was a giant, and when you lose a giant of a guy like Bill, inevitably something’s missing. But that will happen too when John retires, or Liam retires. And maybe when I retire, but I don’t think I’ll be as important as the other guys.
How much does journalism still inform your punditry?
Well, it is a form of journalism.
I mean offscreen. Your research... Say ahead of a game featuring Dynamo Kiev.
Well we get a DVD and we’d know some of the players. You get your pen pictures. But you wouldn’t really know them as much as you’d like to know them. No.
Would the Eamon Dunphy of 30 years ago have stood for that?
Well, if say Shakhtar Donetsk come up, I have to research them. I can’t access Ukranian TV but I’ll get DVDs of their Champions League games and watch them all. At the moment I’m watching a lot of Sweden ahead of the Euros. You’re constantly watching games so you know what you’re talking about. You’re watching the Bundesliga, La Liga, Serie A, the league in France... You’re constantly watching. And learning. So are John and Liam. We’re still students of the game. We’re still totally into it and the changes in the game, the innovations. It’s a very different game to the game we played.
How good is the game now?
It’s poor. They’re running out of talent. And that’s the next big crisis. There won’t be enough players. There won’t be more Messis.
But the game has never been played more, and by so many...
True, but there’s probably too much coaching going on. It’s not played enough on the streets or on the green with free expression, allowing for improvisation. That’s how you learn the game. Trying things out on your own, playing with your mates. You figure a lot of it out yourself. No one told Messi how to play. He figured most of it out himself. If it worked any other way, you could teach another Messi. Coaches can take all that away. That’s why there’s a dearth of talent.
You look at the Manchester United team at the moment. For f***’s sake. There’s no Manchester United players in it!
The goalkeeper [David De Gea] and [Wayne] Rooney and that’s it. So if Manchester United can’t find players... When Ronaldo goes, what will Real Madrid have? There’s nowhere to pluck them from. Barcelona have these three guys [Messi, Suarez, Neymar]. But the next three guys...
But La Masia brought through the likes of Xavi, Iniesta, Pique...
Yeah, but they’re one generation. Manchester United had the Class of ’92. They haven’t produced anything since. Let’s see if Barca produce another Messi. But they won’t.
Is he the greatest of the greats?
I think he is. I’ve always resisted putting one guy above all the others but... he’s f***in’ unbelievable! [Laughs]
If he and you were around at the same time you’d have some company for the lightest player in the Rothmans...
Well, they put him on human growth hormone. If you see his upper body strength and hips, he’s a powerful machine. If they had given me the human growth hormone, I’d have been alright!
I wouldn’t have been Messi but I’d have been okay!
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