Behind the yellow door...
IT WASN’T long after the final whistle sounded for the Waterford-Limerick All-Ireland hurling semi-final, and some journalists were lurking with intent outside the Limerick dressing-room.
The door opened and a Limerick official invited us in; the players were getting ready to leave.
“Who can we talk to?” asked one journalist.
“What do you mean, who can you talk to?” said the Limerick official.
That was enough: the scribes whipped out their tape recorders and fell on their victims like vampires.
Manager Richie Bennis explained their stance: “We have no problem with it. I think it’s silly to bar access at that stage, as it serves no purpose. We’re an amateur sport with a professional outlook, and that outlook should include access to players. I don’t think it affects the players to talk immediately after the game — what harm can they do? All the publicity helps to give the game a bit of a profile, badly needed.”
His selector Gary Kirby concurs: “I’d have no problem with it either, it’s part and parcel of the whole thing, and always was. Leave the players alone in the days leading to the game, by all means, but afterwards it’s a different ball game. I’d have no issue with it. It has never caused us a problem, and I don’t see how it could. In fairness to them, the journalists who come into the dressing-room after a match don’t intrude on players unnecessarily. They’re not sticking microphones into faces, they’re courteous about what they’re doing, and what they’re doing is just their job.”
The scene was remarkable simply because it’s getting rarer and rarer. Those of a certain age can remember the inevitable tail-end of All-Ireland final broadcasts on RTÉ 30 years ago — the late Mick Dunne would appear in the winners’ dressing-room and put the arm on anyone within earshot for interviews. The less said about the huge furry microphone the better.
However, that’s changed. In this year’s All-Ireland hurling final, you have two teams at polar opposites of the dressing-room access scale. Kilkenny preserve the sanctity of the area closely, and nobody is allowed to step across the threshold unless they’re connected with the team.
By contrast, Limerick have an open door policy: if Kilkenny’s dressing-room is an upmarket nightclub, with access strictly controlled, according to whether or not you have the right clothes — a black-and-amber top with a Gain Feeds logo, obviously — then Limerick’s is a house party open to all the neighbours. After a short period of time together, the Shannonsiders invariably throw open the door, whereupon selectors and players chat freely to anyone who asks questions. (The story is similar in football this year, by the way: Cork have the door closed after games, while Kerry have it open).
There’s a neatness in the opposition: two teams, two diametrically-opposed policies, but both in the final. Kilkenny’s huge success in recent years suggests they’re doing the right thing by keeping the door shut. If it ain’t broke, why fix it? Yet the experience of Limerick this season, who haven’t been successful for years, could support the opposite argument.
A relatively inexperienced team when it comes to the rarefied heights of August and September, the fact they’ve had their door open since May means their players aren’t fazed by dictaphones or cameras.
That has to be a help when it comes to getting them right for the big day — on and off the pitch.
IN AMERICA, the situations are quite different. Professional basketball and baseball teams open their dressing-rooms, or locker rooms as they prefer to call them. An NBA locker room is all-access until 40 minutes before tip-off and then must be open within 15 minutes of the end of the game by order of the league. When Michael Jordan was the most famous sportsman in the universe, he sat in his towel and fielded questions like all the other players in the locker room.
A Major League Baseball pass works much the same and reporters can stand outside batting cage during batting practice chatting to players, as well as guaranteeing locker-room access.
The biggest show in town, the NFL, is a little different.
Acclaimed author John Feinstein explains: “Most professional sports make their players available to the press often. Almost every NFL team severely limits access to its players. There are limited times each week when the locker room is open to journalists, but most players simply stay out of the locker-room during that time.”
Feinstein wrote a book last year, Next Man Up, about the Baltimore Ravens, an NFL team with a different attitude to the media. They gave Feinstein unlimited access for his book for an entire season, and six years earlier had allowed a film crew total access to their training camp.
The coach, Brian Billick, explained: “We were the Super Bowl champions, so we were going to spend the entire season under the microscope . . . I figured if the guys spent training camp being trailed by cameras and microphones everywhere they turned, it would be easier for them to handle whatever came after that during the season.”
There’s an immediate and obvious counter-argument: you’re talking about multi-millionaire professionals here, not men who have to get out of bed on Monday and head to offices and building sites, which is a fair point.
But the lesson holds. Billick’s decision to trust his players with cameras and microphones is analogous to trusting his football team with plays and strategies. Enabling a gaelic footballer or hurler to function, to make choices and consider options in a fraction of a second, while 80,000 people are roaring at him, is also a matter of trust.
How did it work out for Feinstein? He became a part of the furniture around the Ravens team — usually referred to as “the book guy” — and before one game, in Pittsburgh, a player took him to one side and fixed his suit collar, saying: “Man, you have to at least try to look good on the sideline.”
GETTING back to the GAA, there doesn’t have to be a big secret or ulterior motive to keeping journalists out of the dressing-room.
Irish Examiner columnist Donal O’Grady instituted a closed-door policy when he took over the Cork hurling team in 2003: “I kept the doors closed, because the dressing-room was a sanctuary, but also there was an element of professionalism. We weren’t looking at Manchester United so much as Munster rugby, say — the press weren’t allowed into their dressing-room, so that was the standard we wanted. Our system was the press requested players, and more often than not, they agreed to talk.
“When I played, it was open house in the dressing-room, and I wanted to give lads space rather than having every Tom, Dick and Harry from the Munster Council, fans, taxi drivers in there.
“When I was manager, our thing was the dressing-room was your home once you got in there. The team would be together and you weren’t watching what you said, you could be yourselves. Fellas had their space. The nature of the journalists was they wanted to get quotes as fast as they could, and fellas mightn’t be able to dress themselves; we had a dress code and lads could get dressed properly before they met the press.
“We didn’t question what other counties were doing. I always said to journalists in Croke Park they had a lot of power and the GAA needed them, so they should lobby for a special area rather than form a scrum outside the door of the dressing-room.”
By contrast, Dara Ó Cinnéide of Kerry was always used to a media influx after games.
“It’s always been the Kerry way to open the dressing-room doors after a game, even after losing an All-Ireland final. It’s a uniquely GAA thing, I suppose, you’ve the towel around the waist and you’re talking away. You’d try to be togged on and dressed at least before the media hordes descended on you, and though the odd time you’d think, ‘If I talk to this guy, will there be five or six more fellas in with questions?’ the only time you’d be annoyed would be if you were wet or have a jersey whipped.
“Sometimes that’d annoy you, if you were half-naked and dripping water, or if some young lads came in and swiped your jersey or whipped your togs. The ideal way for all concerned would be a post-match press conference, but that wouldn’t be the GAA way.
“I think you’re creating more problems if you avoid the press after a game, anyway. It’s harder to duck a reporter than do an interview, it’s more time-consuming.”
A fair point. And true whether the dressing-room door is open or closed.
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