Back in the hot seat
Dunphy Country.
Your correspondent jumps in a taxi outside Heuston Station and when he names a street in Dublin’s southside, the driver pipes up: “You’re heading to Dunphy Country there, bud.”
Spot on. Eamon Dunphy is back with a current affairs radio show on Newstalk, but he’s as happy as ever to talk his major passion. Sport.
Growing up in the 50s on Richmond Road in Dublin — “a grey, bleak time,” — he roamed from Tolka Park to Croke Park, following Drumcondra and Kilkenny.
“Sport gave you something to dream about,” he says. “People say the church down through history has been the succour of Irish people when they were impoverished, but sport was also a great enrichment of people’s lives — wonderful and innocent. And the heroes of those sports were beloved.”
Rugby was distant and remote then, but now he’s a fan.
“I love the games, I love Munster and Leinster, and the Irish team. I think it’s a sport which has reformed itself in the professional era, though I’m told there are problems lower down at club level. There are fantastic people involved, great role models like Declan Kidney as a coach — and as a man. Rugby is terrifically well-run. Soccer could do with referees being miked up and video refereeing — and you never see a rugby player approach a referee aggressively. He’s gone if he does.
“But what sells sport is the stars — Brian O’Driscoll, Paul O’Connell, great people, but what impresses you is their character. The Irish lads, when they won the Grand Slam, they’re still nice lads with no bullshit. I enjoy rugby as a pure fan, but Brent Pope and Conor O’Shea are good analysts. So is George Hook. People say he’s controversial but I’m told he knows what he’s talking about.”
Pause.
“When it comes to rugby,” adds Dunphy before laughing. “Ah, you have to get the dig in.”
Given his own status as a soccer analyst, what’s his view of the domestic game?
“The League of Ireland was always riddled with the wrong kind of people at administrative level. I think John Delaney is a good administrator and is good for Irish soccer and is trying to reform it in certain ways, but its history is diabolical. The decline of part-time soccer, which is what League of Ireland soccer is, is inevitable when you look at what’s on TV. You can watch Barcelona and Inter Milan, the Premiership, and then you have lesser stuff. I lament it, but it was inevitable. Then again, there are very strong allegiances to junior soccer all over the country.”
For a couple of years, Dunphy had a strong allegiance of his own: Castlehaven GAA club.
“We had a couple of very happy years in Castletownshend,” he says. “Castlehaven GAA club was the hub of the whole community there and it was brilliant. I love the GAA. I thought the ban was wrong because sporting apartheid is wrong, but I could see where the GAA was coming from. Opening Croke Park was a profound gesture for the country. I’m critical of aspects of the GAA but as an outsider I always respected its right to keep Croke Park closed.
“I never said they should open it as it was a decision they had to make themselves. It is the most incredible sports organisation in the world. Of course there are backwoodsmen in the organisation, but I love the GAA. It brings out the best of our people, as all sports do, but the GAA notably does that.”
HIS return to the airwaves means a soapbox for his views on Irish life: take the class system. “A child from a poor household might struggle to play golf — or rugby, or yachting, and drift towards GAA or soccer, but if a working-class father was determined to make his son the next Tiger Woods, he could do it.
“There’s one nasty discrimination that the Department of Finance has held against snooker players in that they can’t avail of the tax break which is available to rugby players and golfers and so on. It’s awful and disgusting and discriminates against those who tend to play snooker, who are largely working class.”
Mentioning government involvement in sports finance provokes a surprising admission.
“I was the one who persuaded Garret Fitzgerald to introduce the lottery for sports funding,” says Dunphy. “Back in the 80s, I was a member of Fine Gael and agitating for this. He had no interest in sport but he asked me to write a paper on it, so I did, about the social benefits of sport and so on and he put the lottery idea in train. Then it was hijacked, in the lifetime of his government; once you create funding politicians will jump on it, unfortunately.”
Warming to his theme, he puts sport in another context. “I stopped writing politics and current affairs for a while. I just got sick of it. I genuinely feel the most wonderful people in the country, the shining examples that to be proud of at a time when the politicians, church, bankers, professions are in disrepute — and justifiably held in the deepest contempt — are our sports people.
“The likes of Brian O’Driscoll, Pádraig Harrington, Henry Shefflin, Ruby Walsh, Shay Given, Damien Duff — they’re fantastic people. You can see in them their modesty, unlike their counterparts in other countries. They restore my faith in this country in as far as it’s possible to do. Right now if you wanted to judge this country favourably, you’d look at the sports people. Katie Taylor, the Cork hurlers... Donal Óg Cusack, Sean Óg. Brilliant people. The way they stuck together through that long dispute, showing solidarity, all 30 guys? Unheard of. Donal Óg is a role model for the world.”
There’s more, of course. He has views on sports coverage (“It’s not fawning and unquestioning, the way it was when I started out, and that’s fantastic; whether it’s arts or politics or sport, every activity needs good journalism and is enriched and enhanced by that”). On coaching soccer (“No coaching until the kids are 15”). On the only sports he can’t watch (“The WWF... no”). There’s no end to it.
In the cab back to Heuston — a different cab — the driver volunteers memories of athletics meetings in Ballincollig army barracks 30 years ago. Common cause. Vindication for the king of Dunphy Country.
* Eamon Dunphy presents The Dunphy Show on Newstalk 106-108 fm, every Sunday 11am-1pm.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
