Tackling the hard questions

RTÉ’s Tony O’Donoghue is on a bit of a roll at the moment. First, there was his interview with Roy Keane in their native Cork, a stand-up affair in front of an invited audience in the august surrounds of the Aula Maxima in UCC.

By their nature, such public question and answer sessions are rarely the most productive of platforms for a relaxed let alone revealing exchange of views and, even if it’s the case that Roy Keane’s utterances invariably have some meat on the bone, under the circumstances O’Donoghue played a blinder in extracting more than enough to keep everyone in the crowd — including us demanding hacks — satisfied, from his interviewee’s considered show of support for David Moyes and entertaining tales of early days on Leeside to warnings about the perils of retirement for professional footballers and that show-stopping revelation about an encounter on a plane with Stephen Ireland’s granny.

Time might have been on O’Donoghue’s side that night but, by contrast, he only had a couple of minutes in which to try to get to grips with Jose Mourinho in the bowels of the Parc des Princes following Chelsea’s 3-1 Champions League defeat to Paris Saint-Germain on Wednesday.