Joining the GAA conversation

Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh spent 62 years as the voice of GAA but Newstalk’s Dave McIntyre and Ger Gilroy plan to take their Gaelic games coverage in a totally new direction.

DAVE McINTYRE goes back to April 1986 for his first Croke Park memory. He was smuggled through the turnstiles into the Nally Stand that day by his Cavan father, who was interested in the fortunes of neighbours Monaghan in the football league decider against Laois.

Twenty-five years on, McIntyre will return to headquarters on Sunday week when Dublin attempt to replicate their league hurling exploits when they go toe to toe with Offaly in the Leinster championship. But this time the Newstalk commentator does not have to concoct a plan to gain entry. As the first man to broadcast a live hurling championship commentary for a national station other than RTÉ, McIntyre will journey to his seat in the Upper Hogan Stand without interruption. Over the past few months he has grown accustomed to chronicling the timeline of Premiership and Heineken Cup matches but the prospect of narrating high-octane GAA action leaves him giddy with anticipation.

“I’m bursting with excitement. We’re starting with Kildare against Wicklow this weekend in the football and then Dublin v Offaly in hurling is our first Croke Park game. Given Dublin’s league win, that’s now a huge match. It’s going to be a new experience doing GAA on radio and something I’ll have to grow into.

“Doing rugby commentary was new to me on radio but there are a lot of breaks in play so that helps. I have some GAA experience from doing league games for Setanta. It’ll be more difficult than doing GAA for the TV when the viewer has the pictures and you just need to add value to it.”

Significant is the mention of the indomitable RTÉ commentator whose lilting voice will be absent from the championship for the first time in 62 years. The absence of Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh from press boxes around the country, coupled with the entry of Newstalk into the radio championship market, makes the 2011 season a seismic one on the airwaves.

“Friends of mine have been saying it to me”, admits McIntyre. “But it’s not like RTÉ don’t have good commentators coming up behind Mícheál. I don’t really think it’s fair to compare me or anybody in Montrose to Mícheál. He was a law unto himself and an institution. Everyone listened to Mícheál, you’d see people bringing radios to games and you hear of people watching TV with the volume down so they can listen to him. But you can’t worry about what he has done. Everyone is in the same boat now and it’s a case of doing the best you can.”

For Newstalk, this summer’s championship is not about following the path tread by RTÉ but rather setting out in a different direction. Their coverage of the Heineken Cup over the past few months has allowed them to experiment with their coverage and they have now settled on a model.

“We tried to see how many voices you can have covering a live sports event”, says the station’s sports editor Ger Gilroy. “The plan now for this summer for our 21 live GAA games is to have a commentator, two analysts and a sideline reporter. Sometimes it will work and sometimes it won’t because of the confines of press boxes. But if we can deliver that, we’ll feel that marks the evolution of reporting in the GAA.”

One aspect of their coverage that certainly marks an evolution in the GAA is Newstalk’s plans to interact with listeners via Twitter. The surge in popularity of social media provides an added dimension to this season’s championship in Gilroy’s mind.

“Every week some new high-profile Gaelic footballer seems to go on Twitter, although not many hurlers for some reason. It’s going to be really interesting to see what they’ll say after matches this summer. I’m a big fan of Twitter, I think it’s a really easy way to have conversations and you can gauge public opinion pretty quickly.”

Securing radio rights for the GAA championship is something that Newstalk have been craving. They had a brief flirtation with the GAA in the past through the International Rules series in 2004 and doing live broadcasts of Dublin’s matches in their previous incarnation as a capital radio station. But having finally landed that national prize, they are keen to deliver.

“You can’t be an Irish radio station without the GAA”, reckons Gilroy.

“This is phenomenal for us as it gets us into every town and community in the country, and that’s something we’re really looking forward to.”