Jamesie O’Connor: Taking Sky to another level
You could hardly describe him as a couch potato — let’s face it, he didn’t just look good in that famous blue suit, he made the suit look good; 10 years after his inter-county retirement he looked like he could still play — but if you were to ask him, his ideal way to spend a winter Sunday afternoon would be to plop up on the sofa and watch three NFL games one after the other into the early hours.
Test cricket intrigues him too. And college basketball. And rugby league. Years ago he’d get up on a Saturday morning to specifically watch NRL action from Australia and see an Irish guy called Brian Carney playing for the Newcastle Knights. He’ll still watch the sport’s State of Origin series where New South Wales and Queensland fight it out over three games, a rivalry and event he describes “as intense as any sports event in the world”.
As he says himself: “I’m a sports nut.” But he has standards. He won’t just watch anything or anyone.
“When I’m watching sport [analysis], I’d like to think I’m listening to people who know what they’re talking about. When I’m watching Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher on Monday Night Football, I’m saying to myself, ‘You can see these guys played at the top, they’re not long out of the game, they know what they’re talking about’. And you can see that the technology allows them to do that.”
He’s seen it first-hand already with Sky’s GAA coverage. And no, he’s not talking about last Saturday’s debut from Nowlan Park and his own performance. Last Tuesday fortnight he was down in Cork for a training day with the Sky team. Brian Carney had flown over from the UK, along with a couple of experts to train him how to use the kind of gadgets that Neville and Carragher play around with. But for O’Connor the man who stole the show and underlined what Sky’s technology can do was Peter Canavan.
“The previous Sunday Cork had played Waterford in the drawn [hurling] game and Donegal had played Derry. So we took it like as if we were covering those games. And I remember just sitting back and watching Peter and his analysis with Brian and thinking, ‘this is another level’.
“He said, ‘Right, there’s this myth that Donegal play sweeper and it’s negative’. But then he showed this clip of Frank McGlynn up in attack when the play suddenly breaks down. McGlynn makes his way back in, there’s pressure put on the ball, Derry have to move the ball sideways and when they eventually kick it in who’s there to pick it up but Frank McGlynn.
Then he [Canavan] showed McGlynn bombing forward for Paddy McBrearty’s goal chance and [Leo] McLoone’s goal. And how Karl Lacey had marked Mark Lynch. And the technology allowed Peter to illustrate that in such detail. I thought to myself, that’s quality what Canavan’s after showing me there. Here’s a guy who gets it, who knows exactly what’s going on.”
Judging by the reaction to Sky’s premiere from Kilkenny, O’Connor has prompted a similar level of respect. TV critics have already taken to calling him Jamesie O’Carragher or hurling’s Gary Neville. For all the style and gizmos on show last week, it was ultimately O’Connor’s substance that shone through. He was sober yet pleasant and above all authoritative. Even if you never knew about the two All-Irelands, three Munsters and four All Stars you’d have got that sense: here’s a guy who played at the top level, who knows exactly what’s going on.
It’s why Sky approached him in the first place. He’d worked with TV3 for all six summers they’d covered championship hurling. He thinks the fact they’d only get two or three hurling games a year didn’t allow them to build up the kind of audience rapport and scope that they otherwise might have got, but he likes to think they brought a more analytical and technical approach to the game than RTÉ had prior to their signing of Dónal Óg Cusack. Ciarán O’Hara had been TV3’s producer for that championship coverage and shortly after O’Hara had landed a similar role with Sky he called O’Connor.
The following week they were sitting down in Sky’s offices in Dublin with head honchos Steve Smith and David Lawrence, who had flown over from London.
“We talked a lot about sports coverage in general and Monday Night Football and in fairness they were very interested in the tactical side of hurling.
As part of the training day in Cork, O’Connor had taken the Cork-Waterford drawn game as if Sky had covered it. Before the game he had read an interview with Waterford’s defender Noel Connors who had spoken about the league game when Waterford allowed Clare to take them for 4-15 in the first half. They had allowed Clare too much room and too much time on the ball.
Waterford had obviously learned from that and O’Connor was like an eagle to see how they had addressed that. So into the Sky truck he went, looking for suitable footage on how Waterford had defensively set up.
“Number one, Connors is on Patrick Horgan, Cork’s strike forward. And look at the number of Waterford defenders around him. And secondly, you have a ball hit into the Cork half-back line, a Cork player comes out with it, he’s hit with a shoulder, rides it, but then another Waterford player comes in, hits him another shoulder and he’s just glad to get it away. He skies the ball and you suddenly see Noel Connors on Patrick Horgan and three other Waterford defenders around it, the ball goes to ground and Waterford clear it. So you’re just trying to highlight an adjustment, here’s the Waterford defenders here, this how they’ve cut down that space that they were leaving open before. You’re just looking to offer that level of insight which the technology can accentuate.”
He wasn’t familiar with the gizmos before that training day in Cork, but he’s at such ease with his strapped iPad and touchscreen that he’s like Tom Cruise in Minority Report. From the off though, he was comfortable with Brian Carney. Right away they hit it off. He’s been struck by Rachel Wyse’s professionalism — it wasn’t lost on O’Connor that she was working on the air until 10pm on Sky Sports News last Thursday week yet within 12 hours was in Nowlan Park for the rehearsal — and especially struck by Carney’s enthusiasm.
A few days before the launch in Croke Park, Carney called O’Connor, warmly telling him this would be a success. The day of the launch O’Connor was asking all about the NRL and how the Catalan Dragons can operate as a rugby league team out of France while Carney was able to tell him about his home in Warrington where within 20 miles there’s seven rugby league grounds. Then after the training day in Cork their rapport was ready to show on the screen.
“To me he’s made the job. There’s a chemistry there and I think Peter would say the chemistry between him and Brian is right as well. We’re able to do this with a smile on our face. He’s just a very upbeat, bubbly guy, but as well as that he understands top-level sport and he gets our sport. Okay, he might not have played minor hurling for Cork but he grew up in Wicklow, played club football. He gets the ethos of the GAA.”
Do Sky? He thinks in general they do: that they’re very conscious and respectful of the GAA’s tradition. He’s heard the critics of the deal but even before his own involvement with the station he could see the merits of it.
“I go to school on a Monday morning and you’ll hear staff and kids talking about the NFL. And why? Because it’s been on television. Sky. They’ve seen it. It’s in America, they’re in Ireland, but they’ve seen it.
“So I can totally understand the GAA realising, ‘Look, we have this fantastic product, let’s bring it to a wider, international audience’. I mean, to have been in Croke Park last September [for the All-Ireland hurling final replay] and look around with the lights on and the whole day and the magical feeling that was there, you’re saying to yourself, ‘We should be proud of this. More people should be let in on this’.
“The way I looked at it was, Paraic Duffy and Peter McKenna and the people in the GAA who make a lot of those key strategic decisions would not have taken this road lightly. They would have weighed up all the angles they could have looked at and they haven’t had made too many bad decisions for the organisation over the years. So if they thought it was the right decision, that was good enough for me.”
Others still won’t see it like that, that Sky is far removed from the grassroots.
They’ve said the same about the Gaelic Players’ Association too, but as far back as 14 years ago O’Connor was on the Late Late Show, telling the nation that the players were part of the GAA and its grassroots too. He still is. This year he helped Seanie McMahon out with the Doora-Barefield U21s. Every Wednesday evening he takes the club U10s which includes his son Mark, the youngest of his and Caroline’s three kids. Every year he takes a school team in St Flannan’s where he still teaches.
He’s part of the work group that liaises with and co-ordinates Clare underage development squads. During the early part of the year he’s out six evenings a week. As often as he’s linked with higher profile coaching jobs, he’s declined them, content to quietly work away in the quiet fields.
He likes his life the way it is. Coaching the kids and sometimes coaching the coaches. Teaching.
Doing the media work with the Sunday Indo, Newstalk and now Sky. The bit of golf, the five- a-side soccer on a Tuesday, the yoga, and the odd bit of running; last year he missed out on running a 10k race in under 40 minutes by 12 seconds. Maybe down the line he’ll be part of an inter-county management team. But only as a coach or a selector. Not as a manager. “I don’t think I have the required skill set or personality for it, a la Davy [Fitzgerald] or Dalo [Anthony].”
He can only admire what they’ve both done. “I think inter-county management is a very steep learning curve. Dublin are really benefiting from Anthony’s experience with Clare and Clare are now benefiting from Davy’s time in Waterford. I thought it would take us another two years at least to be up near the level of the Kilkennys but he’s accelerated that process.
“The other thing is the backroom team he’s put together. The respect the players have for Joe O’Connor and Paul Kinnerk is total. Mike Deegan would be highly regarded around the county. And then obviously Louis Mulqueen had a very good track record with us [Doora-Barefield]. And I think a lot of credit has to go to Louis and Davy there. Davy could feck Louis out of it and they both know it’s going to just bounce off Louis because he understands that’s just the type of character Davy is and it’s not going to affect their relationship.”
O’Connor himself has incurred a blast of Fitzgerald’s fire a few times. In his first league game over Clare — a convincing win over Limerick in the Gaelic Grounds — Fitzgerald took umbrage at a remark O’Connor made in his co-commentary on Setanta Sports. But after having it out, they were both fine again.
“Are we close? In regular phone contact? No. But I don’t think many of the lads [former players] would be [with Fitzgerald]. But at the same time when you play with someone and have shared the same experiences that we had as a group, that mutual respect you would hope will always be there.”
It’s a lot like that with Ger Loughnane as well. Loughnane had a cutting comment or two to make about some of O’Connor’s performances in his final year with Clare in 2004 but O’Connor waved it off: life is too short, he says, and his respect for Loughnane too much to hold that barb against him.
In fact that respect is now a fondness. Last month when Loughnane was organising a cancer charity event, O’Connor, along with Sean McMahon and Brian Lohan, manned the turnstiles at the Clare-Dublin challenge game at Loughnane’s request. No better men. A few years ago they feared they could lose him to that dreadful and dreaded disease. But he stared it down. Beat it.
“I believe that willpower counts for a lot. I’m not saying it cures cancer, I’m not that naive, but I do think your mentality and positivity is a factor and there’s plenty of it in that guy. It’s fantastic to see the recovery that man has made. Very few people have the charisma and energy that he has.”
He can still see him on the training ground in Ennis, commanding everyone and everything. His roguery was his genius.
“One of the big things with Ger was he had a great feel for the mood of the players. Any time he felt that any of us were getting ahead of ourselves he had an unbelievable ability to cut the legs from under you and bring you back down to earth.
“In ’97 and ’98 Christy ‘Rusty’ Chaplin would often be marking me in training. Rusty would have been no artist the way Liam Doyle was but he would have been abrasive, physical, hard. And I remember there was this one particular wet night and we were having a 15-a-side game in training. Rusty had cleared the first two or three balls and the next ball came in Rusty sent me flying and drove it down the field. And Loughnane out of the side of his mouth [remarked], ‘Good man, Rusty — you have him f***in’ cleaned!’
“Well, I picked myself up, gritting my teeth, determined to ram it down your man’s throat. And of course that’s what Loughnane wanted. That’s why he said what he did. It wasn’t for Rusty’s benefit — it was for mine!”
Now, years later, Clare are back on top. O’Connor can see why. He coached some of them to Harty Cups and All-Ireland colleges finals and saw others go through the ranks and corridors of Flannan’s and can vouch for the calibre of person and player: Shane O’Donnell’s goalscoring and intelligence; John Conlon’s honesty; Tony Kelly’s skill; Colin Ryan’s striking; he could go on.
If Clare fall short this year, it won’t be because they got notions of themselves.
But they could fall short tomorrow. Cork will be up for it — while the losers of last year’s corresponding game in June didn’t turn out too badly, O’Connor is adamant neither side wants to risk playing Galway in Salthill or Kilkenny in Nowlan Park in a qualifier early next month.
And he senses Cork are on the rise. The past two years he’s coached the Flannan’s U15s and both times it was a Cork team who beat them in the Munster final: Charleville and Midleton CBS.
Finally there’s some signs of underage success in the county. And it’s a huge county.
“I was in Thurles last Sunday and was struck by the number of Cork fans on the field afterwards. People used to doubt Patrick Horgan but he showed with that point in the drawn All-Ireland final that he’s a special player. Conor Lehane excites the crowd. I think the skill they showed last summer, they’re a team the Cork public want to go see hurling. I think Jimmy Barry [Murphy] is getting the most out of them. I just sense there’s a rising tide in Cork.”
Before Thurles though, there’s Wexford Park tonight — exclusively live on Sky Sports. Again he’ll be there. He’s expecting a cracker, intrigued by Wexford’s sudden goal threat. He has footage ready to show just how that’s come about, well aware that some of his extensive homework might never see the screen. Last week for instance: rightly predicting that Offaly would employ a sweeper, he had footage from the Laois-Galway game the previous week illustrating how Laois used one superbly. It was never used as it might confuse rather than enlighten the viewer. Always it’s about the viewer.
“Was there a sense of relief after last Saturday’s broadcast? Absolutely. But did it go flawlessly? Absolutely not. I watched it back on the Sunday night and I was initially annoyed at myself. I watched it a second time then and was a bit more forgiving but there were definitely times I overdid the commentary on a passage of play rather than let the action speak a little bit more for itself. That’s hopefully something I’ll get better at. Then at 8.10 on Monday morning Brian called, looking forward more than looking back. So while the general reaction has been favourable we’ve all been involved in sport at the highest level and know it’s a very thin line between a pat on the back and kick up the arse.”
Spoken like someone who’s played at the top, and knows what he’s talking about.
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