Enda McEvoy: Crumbs from the table - Tales from All-Ireland media nights

Twenty years ago a high proportion of the press participants would stay over wherever the function was and exchange whatever GAA gossip tended to ensue. Those days are gone. They will never return. Pity

POINT TAKEN: It’s almost 30 years since this Ray McManus classic was taken at a Cork press night in Pairc Ui Chaoimh — Enda McEvoy interviewing Ger Fitzgerald before the 1992 decider against Kilkenny. The pre-final media events are now a very different beast. Picture: Ray McManus/Sportsfile

Here are a few takeaways from Cork’s All-Ireland press event at Páirc Uí Rinn last week.

It rained, forcing interviewers and interviewees to gather under the main stand in order to transact their business.

Ger Millerick, meeting the national media for the first time, came across as an engaging young man who had the good grace not to look too weary when asked (presumably for only the millionth time) about the spelling of his name. “So are you related to Linda?” etc.

Micheál Martin, it emerged, had been along earlier to impart his apostolic blessing and be playfully reminded that Cork won plenty of All Irelands under a previous Taoiseach from the city.

And the locals couldn’t have been more helpful, not least Joe Blake, the county board PRO, and Derek Connolly, the keeper of the keys at the ground. Thanks to Derek, in fact, my CV now includes such entries as, “McNamee Award winner. Managed to get the final score correct in most of his match reports. Once used the facilities in the referee’s dressing room in Páirc Uí Rinn.”

Cork manager Kieran Kingston is interviewed by the media during a Cork senior hurling press conference at Pairc Ui Rinn. Picture: Sam Barnes/Sportsfile

I have measured out my life in All-Ireland media gigs, of which last Saturday was the latest way station in a three-decade journey. Obviously I’ve eaten steak in Langton’s, but anyone can eat steak in Langton’s. Less predictably I’ve also eaten steak in the mart in Athenry and under the old main stand in Páirc Uí Chaoimh.

Each of those press nights yields a memory, usually food-based. How suitably Proustian.

In Wexford, I’ve nibbled cubes of cheddar on cocktail sticks. In Tipperary I’ve gorged myself on the patisserie, so good it might have been flown in from Paris, at the Horse and Jockey Hotel. (A couple of hovering Italian tourists had the good sense to get stuck in as well.).

In Galway, I’ve devoured chicken wings despatched from the local Supermac’s in downtown Loughrea.

Along the way, almost as an afterthought, I’ve harvested quotes I’ve hammered into stories. Maybe someone read them.

The increasingly loud tick of the clock prompts the reflection that queuing up politely for quotes from — also increasingly — people half one’s age is probably not a job for a grown-up. Then again, it makes us aware of our place in the scheme of things, which is never any harm. Are the players flattered to be asked their opinions or are they sniggering inwardly at us as we run around full of our own self-importance? I have no idea. Maybe it’s better that way.

Come to think of it, would the GAA world grind to a halt if there were no All-Ireland media events and therefore far skimpier coverage of Sunday’s showpiece? Very possibly not, but to grumble that the quotes that emerged were anodyne is to miss the point.

Of course, they were anodyne. John Kiely is unlikely to offer his exegesis of Cork’s puckout strategy. Kieran Kingston is not about to specify the areas in which his lads need to up their game on the Munster semi-final. And no player or manager is going to offer a hostage to fortune in the form of a lurid soundbite. They talk at length while saying very little. Of course, they do.

On which point Ger Ryan, the Tipperary PRO at the time, made an interesting observation a few years ago. Why, he wondered, did GAA writers seem fixated on securing player interviews when profiles of the same players were often infinitely more enlightening — you know, insightful anecdotes from colleagues and former managers instead of carefully curated quotes from the horse’s mouth? Fair question.

That the beast has to be fed is inarguable. Either the GAA want publicity for big matches or they don’t. Press gigs, regardless of their imperfections, constitute the easiest means of obtaining it.

There is no one size that fits every All-Ireland media evening.

In 1996 Liam Griffin, who in any case had had us eating out of his hand all summer, was so keen to be helpful that he put on a light training session in Wexford Park, after which the hacks were allowed onto the pitch to interview whichever players took their fancy. (“Ah hello George, nice to meet you. Tell me, how many Leinster and National League finals was it you’d lost up until a few weeks ago..?”).

Afterwards everyone repaired to the Talbot Hotel for a press conference with the team management. This, bless them, was overegging it. By now everything that could possibly have been asked and answered had been asked and answered. Even Griffin had run out of things to say.

For a couple of years in the early noughties, the Kilkenny press night was a joke, a nadir being reached the evening the players finished eating and disappeared out of one door while the media waited at the entrance to the dining room. Sometime around 2007 Kieran O’Connor of Glanbia got a handle on things. All changed utterly, and utterly for the better.

Thereafter four or five players were wheeled out annually, placed at separate tables and the gun fired for the pack to descend. One player was cordoned off exclusively for the Sunday papers, an innovation for which I claim full responsibility. (Purely out of self-interest, I need hardly add, given that I just happened to be employed by the Sunday Tribune.) Far from being reticent, as per their Roundhead image, Brian Cody’s players chatted away happily, most of them even appearing to enjoy the attention. It is no surprise that so many have returned as pundits in retirement.

Kilkenny’s success thankfully put paid to the notion, so common at the time as to have hardened into received wisdom, that a player who was quoted in the papers beforehand would inevitably have a stinker come the big day. On this count Exhibit A remains a Tipp man, however.

In 2010 Lar Corbett was thrown into a room in the Horse and Jockey Hotel with the Sunday paper guys. Being Lar he took to the task like several ducks to water. At the end of the allotted 45 minutes Seamus O’Doherty, genial master of ceremonies in the Árd Comhairle section of the New Stand in Semple Stadium, popped his head in, saw how well it was going and — splendid fellow! — gave us another 15 minutes.

Lar was so traumatised by his grilling that he went on to hit three goals in the final.

Oh yes, the catering. Look, we are not complicated folk. We are not gourmets. Our instincts may not be base but they’re certainly basic. The beasts have to be fed and fillet steak is always a winner. If you ever find yourself musing that Kilkenny generally receive positive coverage, the once-annual All-Ireland media night dinner in Langton’s is the reason why.

The genre, alas, is dying. Twenty years ago a high proportion of the participants would stay over wherever the function happened to take place. Late drinks and the exchange of GAA gossip tended to ensue. Those days are gone (heck, the accompanying byline pic is even 2008), killed off by the motorways and technology and parsimonious accountants. They will never return. Pity.

Incidentally I don’t have access to tickets for Sunday, before you ask. I’m a journalist.