The old Bill
BILL O’HERLIHY doesn’t take long to set out his stall.The genial Corkman was recently voted IFTA TV Personality of the Year on the back of his skilled mediation of RTE’s soccer coverage, but he has plenty of opinions of his own.
“Cork should have won the hurling three-in-a-row starting in 2003, not ending in 2006. The ‘03 final was there for the taking.”
It’s not surprising that’s our first port of call. O’Herlihy describes himself as “reared on the Barrs, even though my father was a Blackrock man, in a great era of hurling.
“That was the time of Sean Condon, Tom Mulcahy, Tony O’Shaughnessy, Barrs men who went on to play for Cork. Christy Ring would have been part of that, of course, so were Willie John Daly and Mattie Fuohy.”
O’Herlihy went to a great hurling school in Cork — Farranferris — and played hurling and football up to junior level for Craobh Rua, but when he joined the Cork Examiner as a young reporter his playing days came to an end. “I’d say I was an average player, I wouldn’t pretend I was any better,” he admits.
He covered Gaelic games for the newspaper at a time when Ring was coming to the end of his playing days and moving into management: “I found him an intimidating person — not because of his personality, he was never rude, but because of his reputation. As a young reporter I found him formidable to speak to.
“As a player, though, Ring was just the greatest hurler of all time — and he always delivered. He could swing a match like that. I don’t believe the modern era is tougher to play in than the Ring era, either. John Giles would describe some players as ‘sunshine boys’, very good when the team’s doing well. Ring wasn’t like that: he was always very good.”
As a former left-back for Crofton Celtic in Cork, however, O’Herlihy always had an eye for soccer, and he covered games for the Examiner at a time when Flower Lodge was heaving with crowds for League of Ireland outfits such as Cork Athletic and Cork Hibernians.
“My first memory of soccer was Raich Carter,” says O’Herlihy. “He must have been nearly fifty when he came to play in Cork. He’d stand with his foot on the ball in the middle of the field and direct the play with pinpoint passes.”
O’Herlihy was able to draw on that background when he and Eamon Dunphy took over a small continuity studio in the bowels of RTE to cover World Cup games.
“We started off, the two of us, in a small poky studio filling ten or fifteen minutes, half-time, and whatever time we had afterwards. That was wonderful, because Dunphy is a great conversationalist with a left-field view on lots of things.
“But it was Dunphy who persuaded Tim O’Connor - by far the best head of sport RTE ever had - that we needed another dimension. He advocated Giles and Tim said we’d try him.”
O’Herlihy was intimidated initially by the former Leeds United star. “I was comfortable with Dunphy while Giles was an icon of Irish sport, a man who’d defined the game here in many respects. But he was very sympathetic and never patronised - he realised I didn’t know anything like as much as him but he brought me along with him.”
O’Herlihy’s deft steering of the analysis owed something to his early days as a GAA reporter.
“I’d always put Paddy Downey and the late Val Dorgan down as the two best GAA writers ever when it came to match reporting, and one time at a game I asked Paddy what his philosophy of sportswriting was, if you like.
“Paddy said there was a woman in Barna who loved the games but didn’t understand them. ‘When I write, I write for her so her understanding increases with everything I write,’ he said. That always influenced my approach: it doesn’t bother me to ask a question which appears stupid if I think there’s a genuine appetite for the answer. That’s your function as a journalist or an anchorman.”
He’s helped by the hard work done in the background - “I compile information as we go along, and on the day of a Champions League game, for example, I’d do a lot of work in advance on what’s likely to come up; you have to do it.
“There can be tense exchanges - such as when Cristiano Ronaldo and diving are mentioned - but generally it’s not tense. Everyone is directed on getting their messages across.
“We once did a survey which showed that only 34% of the audience understand the game - therefore my job as chairman is to ask the questions that will enlarge their knowledge of the game. The function of the analysts is to communicate their points in a way that isn’t garbled and technical. That’s one of the elements that’s been very successful.”
O’Herlihy points out that the panellists don’t have an agenda other than describing the game - “Unlike Sky, for instance, who have a huge investment in the game and don’t rubbish their own product. Graeme Souness, when he joined, was astonished by the bluntness and the honesty.”
Others might be astonished by the conversations going on off-camera.
“Johnny Giles has a very good sense of humour and is very, very well-informed,” says O’Herlihy. “You could talk to him for a long time about subjects other than soccer. While we’re watching a game in the studio we could be having a very animated discussion of current affairs, or politics. Then there are the golf lessons from Ray Houghton.
THOUGH identified now with RTE’s soccer coverage, O’Herlihy still has broad sporting tastes.
“I love the huge range of the Olympics. I was lucky in the swimming, for instance, in that Gary O’Toole, the studio expert, was a fantastic communicator, and my daughter Sally was a national swimming champion many times, so I got her to do my research.
“The worst thing you can do when talking to top sportspeople is to be unprepared - you have to have the knowledge to work from and you must be able to identify the issues. Gary is a magnificent talker, so is Eamonn Coghlan and Jerry Kiernan. John Treacy was very good with us before he became head of the Sports Council.”
O’Herlihy also anchored rugby shows until the Premiership came in - not surprising for someone who, as a small boy, was proud to carry Bertie O’Hanlon’s gear bag from the Mardyke to the Western Star - working with the late Mick Doyle, Tony Ward and George Hook.
He also started The Sunday Game, with the late Enda Colleran as football analyst and Eamonn Cregan the resident hurling expert.
“I had great fun with them. Enda once told me he thought he’d be the first captain to faint before an All-Ireland final, that people didn’t understand the stress of coming from a tense dressing-room out a dark tunnel to a cacophony of noise and light.
“He said he was within an ace of collapsing with the tension before following the Artane Boys Band around ahead of the 1964 final until he looked across to the Kerry captain and saw he was as bad!”
Asked for a role model, O’Herlihy moves from sport to light entertainment. “My hero is Michael Parkinson - I’ve always thought he was fantastic in the way he listened and developed conversations. By not promoting himself he became huge. That’s where a lot of people make a mistake. Gay Byrne never hogged the limelight - he relaxed people because he’d done his work in advance and he didn’t threaten people.
After an hour in O’Herlihy’s company, is it worth risking the catchphrase? He laughs.
“If I got a euro for every time someone said ‘okey-doke’ and every fella thinks he’s the first! In fairness, Apres Match has given us an additional cachet and created more interest.
“But I met a man during the last World Cup who put on a bet for which he’d win serious money, €15,000, if I said ‘okey-doke’, but I didn’t say it. He was annoyed because of that. Think about it - after 42 years on television, my career will be reduced to two words!”
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