‘We are not spin doctors for the GAA’

Our GAA correspondent Jim O’Sullivan covers his 70th All-Ireland final tomorrow, 35 years after his first. Pat Spillane (pictured) fuelled the debate at the Ring of Kerry Golf Club this week about changing times, while Colm O’Connor stroked it.

Colm O’Connor: Your first All-Ireland was in 1971. How does the coverage of that compare with today?

Jim O’Sullivan: What I remember most of 1971 was that Offaly won - one of five teams I saw winning their first All-Ireland title. The big difference in coverage is the expansion of the media. Back then you had the daily papers including the Irish Press and the two Sunday papers. There was no local radio or internet. Another thing was there were no analysts or named writers - you just had your straightforward match report on the All-Ireland final for Monday’s paper and then Monday was a day for following up for Tuesday. The build-up used to be very gradual. It was nothing like the blanket coverage which we see in the papers today. I used to go the hurling and football press nights on my own. Today we would send three or four reporters to each of those press nights. I would come back and spend the week writing up eight, nine or 10 interviews.

CO’C: Pat, your first experience of an All-Ireland SFC final came in 1975. Can you recall the pressures of the press?

Pat Spillane: The media hype of GAA was really starting around 1975. But even at that, as Jim said, there was only a couple of reporters coming to the press night. There was Jim, Michael Ellard, John D Hickey, Padraig Purcell, Paddy Downey, Mick Dunne and Peadar O’Brien. Television was one evening when they would do a bit of filming and interview two or three players. And it was unobtrusive - and the same applied after the games. Today it has gone out of control. It is a media circus. Back then there was a great trust between players and journalists because you knew them so well. Journalists in those days were only working as reporters. Criticism when it came was fairly mute and it was probably deserved, whereas today it is completely different.

CO’C: Jim, would you agree that 1975 marked a new era in the media relations with the GAA?

JO’S: It was the start of the cult of the manager. It was all about Mick O’Dwyer and Kevin Heffernan and it took off from there.

PS: And Dublin being there was a big factor in making it such a big media thing. One story sticks in my memory from 1975. I asked one of the reporters working for a Dublin newspapers who he thought would win and he told me Kerry. But when I read his piece in the paper he tipped Dublin. I met him on the Monday after the All-Ireland and said to him ‘I thought you were backing Kerry but you wrote Dublin.’ He replied: ‘Our market is mainly in Dublin and if I said Kerry, and Dublin won it, people would say we were an anti-Dublin paper.’ But we had the greatest grounding in media relations as we had the greatest spin doctor to ever stand in Ireland in charge of us. Dwyer was the greatest PR machine this country has ever known. Dwyer instilled in us the belief that the media was there to be used and abused. He was the ultimate man to work it. He could spout any gibberish and it would be taken down verbatim. And the players took the same approach.

I can’t understand media bans nowadays. The media is a vehicle to be used to get your little angle or thoughts across. And I think that these bans lead to a siege mentality and a bit of paranoia. But it was brilliant in those days. There is a famous story about Ger Power and Peadar O’Brien with Ger telling him to use the quotes from the previous year before another All Ireland final. What we used to do was use the poor mouth and do as much as possible to build up the opposition.

JO’S: Kerry were great to us. Micko was great but guys like Pat, Ogie and Mickey Sheehy would have got their first national publicity through the Examiner. You would have gone down to training before a Munster final and the door was always open and the players were always co-operative.

PS: It was easy to be so helpful as we were winning all the time. When you are winning, you are getting glowing reviews and good press. We got to 10 All-Ireland finals and that meant a lot of really, really good press. But back to media bans. I think it has nothing to do with protecting players; it is only hyping up managers.

CO’C: Has the age of the media ban made life more difficult for journalists?

JO’S: Like Pat, I wonder if players have a lot of input into these media bans. But yes it is tougher. However, the Tyrone press night for the final was totally open and in Mickey Harte’s book he makes the point that if you can’t trust players to deal responsibly with the media, then how can you expect them to make decisions out on the field?

PS: The vast majority of GAA players are intelligent and articulate. They are not going to make fools of themselves.

CO’C: Has the GAA, as an organisation, a very wary attitude towards the media?

PS: For a long time the GAA looked on the media as another part of their PR arm. But I think that when the changes in coverage took place in the 80s they had a very negative attitude, especially towards television. There was a feeling of wanting the bread buttered on both sides, that the publicity was fine but keep the warts in the background. But I think that now the feeling is that the media, in whatever shape, is good for the GAA. If you look at the rise of GAA, and the coverage, it has been an upward graph and one can thank the other for it. It sells papers, it keeps a lot of local radio stations alive and the viewership figures are up again this year on RTÉ. The product is so good.

CO’C: Why is this?

JO’S: The redevelopment of Croke Park, and grounds across the country aside, the thing that has really impressed me about the GAA in the last couple of years has been the professionalism of preparation. I was fascinated last year when John Allen was explaining some of the things which Donal O’Grady did with the Cork hurlers. He had gotten software from rugby and adapted them to his own use. He would bring in a player and using this technology he could go through a series of match incidents with him. That brought it home to me just how thorough and how extensive preparations have become. And of course there is the work that the players themselves are doing.

CO’C: Does this mean professional GAA players is an inevitability?

JO’S: No. I don’t think the GAA could every sustain professionalism. You talk of television coverage but that is only TV in Ireland. Look at the Premiership and the Champions League and how the money is made from rights around Europe and the world. Maybe down the road, and the sooner the better for some players, there might be some system where players could be compensated for loss of wages. If you are working in Cork and training in Kerry, you are losing out by having to give up on night work or overtime. I think we have seen terrific advances in the sense that player welfare is now high on the agenda, and Sean Kelly and the different committees in Croke Park have seen to that. As I understand it, the day you introduce payment into the GAA, the Bosman ruling would apply. That would mean that under European law, players would be free to move from one county to another. If you were ever to do away with the parish rivalry or the county rivalry, then the GAA would be heading for a very slippery slope.

PS: The idea that the GAA is amateur is a myth in the sense that you have paid officials, coaches, physios, masseurs and on and on. And all that is well and good but that brings you to the players. The bottom line is that players don’t want to get paid and the history of professional sport in Ireland is a history of disaster. I will argue the point that there is a great need to compensate players. But I genuinely believe that the idea that Mick O’Dwyer flagged should be followed up, that teams who reach an All-Ireland final, semi or quarter should be given a lump sum, on a scale. The money can go to a team fund to be used whatever way they want - as a hardship fund, team holiday or to compensate players. But if it keeps evolving the way it is, we could be in danger of losing the best talent because guys could take the opportunity of going to other sports or to burnout. The intensity is a worry.

CO’C: Are you getting as much enjoyment out of it now Jim?

JO’S: The big thing for me has been the friendships. I got to know Sean O’Neill, one of the greatest players I ever saw, on an All-Star tour and we still keep in touch. I am very friendly with a lot of the Kerry lads like Bomber, Mickey, Pat, and in modern times Peter Canavan. I could stay here for an hour talking about the gentlemen I met through the game.

PS: You talk about gentlemen in sport and it is an often abused phrase but Jim was and is the gentleman of sports journalism. He treated you fair. A comment off the record was a comment off the record. He treated everyone well and he is respected for that.

CO’C: Is that attitude as prevalent among your peers now as it was when you began?

JO’S: For the most part yes. But I would never say some of the things I have heard on television. Somebody on TV once described a player as being like a Sherman tank and I thought that was over the top.

PS: It was probably me! The difference between print media and television is that television is more in the business of entertainment and off the cuff. In print, it is more a case of dealing with fact.

JO’S: I don’t like people to be too personal in their criticism but it is difficult when you meet people on an ongoing basis. I have lots of incidents over the years of dealing with people I may have criticised. I remember one referee who I roasted after a Munster U21 final and years later I was introduced to him and I was almost still embarrassed by what I had said all those years before. That helps you to tone down your criticism. You relate to the person on a personal level.

CO’C: Do we in the media get a little carried away with thoughts on our own worth?

PS: The myth that players and manager don’t read papers is another load of shite. Every player and manager reads papers. When I was playing if I read a piece that was negative then I would aim to go out and prove that person wrong and if I saw something that was praising me I would go out wanting to prove them right. I’m now part of the media but in another way I’m not. Where Jim needs to know players and deals with them and managers, I have no dealings with any of them. I make it my business to steer clear of anywhere there might be a bunch of players or managers. I am at a remove from them all, I don’t know them on a personal basis and I find that I have no problem criticising them. It is not personal.

JO’S: We would hate for anyone to think that we are subservient to them either. We are not spin doctors for the GAA. Your loyalty is to your newspapers and to your readers and you have to be balanced and I have always striven to be balanced.

CO’C: Will Jack O’Connor continue his perfect championship record tomorrow?

JO’S: I am going for Tyrone on the basis that they are battle-hardened and have come through a much more testing campaign. While I couldn’t point a finger at Kerry and highlight weaknesses, I feel that Tyrone will be too strong for them.

PS: Kerry. Because they are prepared for the battle. They are ready this time unlike 2003. The Kerry footballing animal of 2005 is a much different and tougher one than two years ago.

Classic Games

CO’C: Starting with you Jim, if you were picking a team for the ages, who would be the automatic starters?

JO’S: You’d have Jack O’Shea, Maurice Fitzgerald, Dermot Earley, Kieran McGeeney, a super player to lift any team and Billy Morgan, who for years kept Kerry at bay.

Ray Cummins was another class act. Earley I always admired him, even though he never won an All Ireland but in a way I think he has gained more notoriety by not being in that category.

Martin McHugh was an outstanding football with Donegal and Colm O’Rourke was another for Meath. From Dublin, Kevin Moran was special as a centre-back in the time he was there.

CO’C: Was Moran that good?

PS: Not really. He is the only guy whose career highlight was a wide. To be a great player you need to have at least five or six years consistently performing. Dermot Earley was good but I would not class him in a list of greats.

But I think there is something about players who never won All Ireland suddenly become great players.

JO’S: Of course you can’t forget the modern players. Peter Canavan was a one man show for years for Tyrone. Seamus Moynihan is an exceptional player in any era.

PS: Peter would fit into any of the modern teams as would Maurice and Seamus.

One of the things that people ask of modern Kerry footballers is how many would have fitted into our team and Seamus Moynihan would have been a definite.

Maybe not Maurice though because he was a different type of player, more an individual whereas our system was more about movement and everyone had a role. But he is one of the all time great forwards.

I’m not to sure about McGeeney. If I was picking great centre backs of the last twenty years he might be down around five or six.

CO’C: Is it too early to be considering Gooch in such a light?

PS: You would be thinking about it. He is magical. He has everything but I do think that you need to stay at the top for a few years and then you are a great player. But he is heading that way.

I think he is the most magical player on the ball in Ireland and the most difficult to dispossess because not alone has he superb foot-balling skills but he has also brought a basketball dimension into the game in the way that he can shield and shadow the ball.

CO’C: What was the best All-Ireland that you covered Jim?

JOS: No All-Ireland springs to mind. The one game that still stands out for me was the 1976 Munster final replay between Kerry and Cork as a fantastic game of football. It was fought out with incredible intensity from start to finish which led it into extra time. I often thought that football history would have turned out differently if Kerry had gone on to win that All Ireland.

I think by losing it they realised that All Irelands don’t come easy. Declan Barron in particular stands out in memory for that. He was an incredible fielder of the ball.

PS: People automatically look to All Irelands as classics

Galway and Kildare and Derry and Dublin are to finals that stick out for me. I’m all dubious about the 1977 All-Ireland because Dublin won and the media jumped all over it. But I’d agree with Jim about 1976.