The village voice
WHEN he speaks he soundtracks the summer. Micheal Ó Muircheartaigh is as much a part of the GAA experience as a ham sandwich and the national anthem after six decades at the microphone. The constant presence has seen a lot of changes in that time, such as an obvious difference on the field of play.
“The average player is now bigger, though that’s an observation you could make of people just walking along the street. With the more scientific approach to training they’re also fitter, even though older people would say in their time they had a lot of natural fitness because long ago people walked and cycled everywhere and they also did more manual work.
“You’d have to consider that — they didn’t need weightlifting that time as a result. Players are definitely bigger and fitter. Whether they’re better, that’s a different matter.”
Yet the Kerry native doesn’t necessarily accept that skills have deteriorated in the modern game, unlike many GAA conservatives. “If anything I think players spend more time now perfecting their skills: for instance, most players can take sideline cuts nowadays reasonably well. There was a time teams had a specialist to take line balls and other players didn’t bother taking them because it was the specialist’s job.
“All around the players nowadays are better prepared now, but I was speaking recently to Martin White of Kilkenny, the oldest living All-Ireland medallist. He’s 95 and he can remember spending five or six nights a week hurling — a whole crowd of people in a field, no referees, no sides, no match, everyone just trying to get the ball for a few hours. He said when he worked in Waterford he’d cycle out to Mooncoin, a good few miles out, because there was a field there where lads would play. They probably did more of that, hurling as he’d call it, like a golfer might practice his swing. The thrill for them would be in the middle of the crowd and maybe beating a county man in the crowd, because you’d have all sorts of players there. Nowadays it’s coaching and individual preparation, but then again, everything changes.”
Off the field Ó Muircheartaigh selects the opening of Croke Park as one of the biggest of those changes.
“Opening Croke Park is a good thing; Gaelic games can now hold their own with any sport. The K Club will be seen around the world in the Ryder Cup and by opening Croke Park up more people around the world will see it and marvel at it, and give credit to the Association that put it there. That’s a point many people are missing.
“When people saw Portmarnock and Ballybunion and so on in the past they gave credit to the Golfing Union of Ireland for having those facilities, and the GAA will gain a lot of respect for what they’ve done in putting that facility at the disposal of not just their own members, but also for others. That’s the main thing.”
When it comes to the games themselves, the commentator confesses to a natural grá for the underdog and for “the occasion that develops when something unusual happens”. Clare’s breakthrough year of 1995 is the obvious example.
“When they eventually broke through after waiting since 1932 to win Munster, it was a fantastic achievement even if they never went a step further. It was great to see the joy it brought to everyone in the county — and outside.
“People love to see the underdog winning. They like to see Cork and Kilkenny and Tipperary, but they’d draw something special from it if Waterford won an All-Ireland, or if Galway won another one, or if a new county won through like Offaly did in 1980. I was there the day they won their first Leinster, when there was only 9,000 people to see them beat Kilkenny, who were All-Ireland champions. I’ll never forget that.
“I’d like to see Paul Flynn win an All-Ireland. I first saw him as a minor in 1992, when they reached the All-Ireland. Although they lost he was very good, extremely skilful, and he won an U-21 All-Ireland medal with them later that year. I’m sure he’s waiting ever since and wondering will they ever get a senior chance. Tony Browne would have been on that team as well, and I’d like to see the likes of them win a medal. In the same way there’s a new generation of Galway hurlers I’d like to see win. Joe Canning will play in his third minor final this Sunday, trying to emulate Jimmy Doyle. I saw Jimmy play in his four minor All-Ireland finals in the fifties, and though minors didn’t get that much attention then, he was noticed. People would refer to the ‘young fella on the Tipp minor team’ around that time.”
Ó Muircheartaigh points to equally romantic breakthroughs in football: “When Clare won a Munster football title in 1992, when the great teams came out of Ulster — there was something very romantic about the Donegal win in 1992, the first of a series of great teams to come out of the North.”
He was there when Leitrim won the Connacht title in 1994, their first since 1927. A research trip before the game showed just how times had changed.
“I called to the captain of the ‘27 team, Tom Gannon, a week before the 1994 final. He was in his 90s then, and he said the team had never met for a single training session when they won in 1927. They’d meet, play the match and cycle away home. I asked casually about receiving the cup and he said: ‘What cup? There was no cup, it was a match just like any other one. It ended and we went away home’.
“It’s only when you do that you see the changes — in Cork and Kilkenny there are press nights, and photographs with the cup and statements and so on. I think those changes are for the better, because they involve more people.”
THOUGH closely linked in the public mind with Kerry, and west Kerry in particular — hence the title of his autobiography, ‘From Dun Sion to Croke Park — Ó Muircheartaigh takes pride in the fact that he’s never been accused of bias towards or against a particular county.
“I always say to young commentators that you talk about what’s happening. It’s not about personal biases or anything like that. You might like to see a particular team win, but that’s a different thing altogether. Once the game starts you should talk about what happens and give credit to every player without colouring it. The reality is the best of all — to watch Donal Óg Cusack or Henry Shefflin and enjoy what they’re doing as much as if you were sitting in the stand just watching.”
He was delighted when those sitting in the stand got to hear speeches made as gaeilge by Dara Ó Cinneide in 2004 and by Sean Óg Ó hAilpin in 2005.
“I got great enjoyment out of that. Sean Óg always speaks Irish to me; if I was on one side of O’Connell Street and he was on the other, he’d shout across to me in Irish, and that’s great. I was up in the North recently and they told me when Sean Óg was up there at the Cormac McAnallen Summer School he stayed there a long time so that everyone who wanted a word with him could get a chance to do so. That’s the story you always hear about him, and all the Cork lads are like that.
“Dara Ó Cinnéide is the same, he always talks Irish to me, and to be fair, other players speak Irish also, like Coman Goggins of Dublin. A lot of people have Irish now and it’s great to hear it.”
In October Ó Muircheartaigh brings out a new book of memories, and he hopes people enjoy that as much as his autobiography (“I met one man in his nineties from Clare who got three copies, and he told me he read the three of them. He was so honest he wanted to be able to say to anyone who sent him a copy that he’d read the copy they’d sent”).
Before that there’s the small matter of the All-Ireland hurling final: “Though people like to see underdogs winning, they also like to see the best in action, and these two teams are the best around. JJ Delaney is a huge loss to Kilkenny. They’re a great goal-scoring team but I think Cork will shade it — they’re single-minded, they’re great planners, and they’re never beaten.”
And having the most-imitated voice in Ireland? Surely that gets irritating?
“Not at all, I enjoy meeting them. I was driving down the west one time and when I stopped to get petrol the man in the garage told me the mechanic was always imitating me. He brought me in to the workshop to meet the mechanic, who was under a car, and the mechanic imitated me while he was lying on his back underneath the car — and he wasn’t bad at all!”
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
