From Cassidy to a Cyclone

I would find it very hard to split the difference in some interviews.

It depends on so many factors, none more than the setting. A cafe with a particularly loud sound system can end up destroying the chemistry of an interview. Sitting too close to a crowd of people can also be a total disaster.

I find that the best thing to do, but it is also the most difficult, is to meet people in their own environment. I conducted a lot of interviews with Kevin Cassidy of Donegal on the move, with him driving me around some of the most scenic parts of Gaoth Dobhair, blathering away about everything under the sun.

One other time sitting at his dining table he got to telling me stories of Donegal players celebrating championship defeats and he made it sound like the closing-down parties at Ibiza. Some people aren’t comfortable with tales and stories of this kind making the public domain but that’s a po-faced killjoy approach to the media and to life.

Another favourite was a car journey I shared with Val Andrews from Navan to Cavan, when he managed Cavan to a league win over Louth, and then back again. He told me his whole life from start to finish and it veered from tragedy to comedy and back again all the way throughout, culminating in him waking up in a hotel room in Cavan back in the late ’90s, having accepted the job of Cavan manager, trying to figure out a way to break the news to his wife.

He was living in Tralee at the time, which would have made the job handy for him.

No, sorry, there is a winner. I stayed a night with Barry McGuigan in his home near Canterbury in 2002. There was a surreal start to that interview because his chauffeur was Mervyn Day who used to be goalkeeper for Leeds United. Barry told me to bring a pair of shorts. I thought we’d be lying out in his back garden in the sun. But when I got there he insisted that we go for a six-mile run through the fruit forests that surround his house.

Given the pace he set I was exhausted when we completed it, but then he told me to follow him down to the gym where he fired weights around the room for an hour, pausing for recovery sets of pull ups and sit ups.

The man is stronger now than when he was a world champion boxer because he is able to put on the bulk. I was only 21 at the time and eventually resigned myself to hauling myself to the corner of the gym to watch him. It was all I could do to concentrate the mind to avoid puking.