GER GILROY: Glory days of access all areas

The best interview is always the immediate post-match in the dressing room which you don’t really get any more.

When I was starting out in the late ’90s, you’d have access to the dressing room.

I remember being able to cross from the press box to the far dressing room at Croke Park. The fastest way was actually to get onto the pitch. All you had to do was flash your press badge to the steward and say you were press, show the microphone and they would let you walk along the sideline.

It would be an All-Ireland quarter-final or a semi-final at Croke Park and with five minutes to go, you’d be getting down to make sure you were there as soon as the teams arrived in.

You’d actually be on the field of play and immediately afterwards you’d get some of the best interviews of your career in both the defeated and winners’ dressing rooms.

The fact that doesn’t happen anymore is unfortunate, but I understand why. You can’t have randomers streaming onto the pitch with a couple of minutes to go in the big games.

I remember Brian Whelehan, flu-ridden, after the 1998 All-Ireland final. He had a sensational game where they threw him up to the forwards and I remember him leaning on the wall, completely dead, yet absolutely exhilarated by the win.

To get a sound bite of him and just to be down there was pretty special.

That was one.

Also, I always remember Dermot Earley in the dressing room after a drawn game against Dublin in the 1998 Leinster championship.

It was the quarter-final and Earley had only joined the panel in 1997. In ’97 Kildare hadn’t beaten Meath twice, when they had big leads twice and blew them.

I remember then that drawn game against Dublin because the consensus was that Kildare had blown their chances, because you don’t get a second chance when you’re the underdog.

He was pointing out there was no way we were losing the replay, that we were by far the better team out there. To see him, so young, taking possession of the dressing room of grown, old men, that was pretty special.

The worst interview is with the players who don’t want to talk, but have corporate commitments to be there. They don’t want to give anything away. They have been stung before and they are desperately afraid of saying something that will be used by a dodgy sub-editor.

Recently, we did an interview with a soccer player from Chelsea. It was terrible. He was paid to promote a computer game and didn’t want to do it, didn’t have anything interesting to say for himself yet he has this amazing story. If he just decided he was going to tell this story, it’s the one I will tell and I’ll give it to everybody and everyone would be happy, but he wouldn’t do that.

It’s not a specific worst incident, but it’s where somebody has shown up to take the cash and run away. I understand why they do it and I fully accept that they need to get paid for this, but if you’re going to agree to do it, at least agree to earn the cash.

* Interview: Eoghan Cormican