Frankness and fun top the bill
Eamon Dunphy is many things. Controversial, opinionated, fiery and not afraid to contradict himself either.
What he could never be called is dull though. That’s why his thoughts on subjects like Bill O’Herlihy’s upcoming retirement to sex bans for players in the World Cup always gain traction.
Nothing is off limits. Dunphy tells it as he sees it. That frankness is a key part of the success of the RTE panel and is, in Dunphy’s view, what separates them from their rivals with the exception of Sky thanks to the emergence of Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher.
“There’s no palsy walsy when the light goes on and I think that’s very different,” he says.
“On most of the other alternative panels, they only say what they think when the light goes off. I think they have their conversations afterwards with a drink. It’s shocking.
“Now there are exceptions. Carragher and Neville have upped Sky’s game and the Monday night thing they do is really electric. But Alan Shearer? Very bland, the Gareth Crooks syndrome. Alan Shearer was a great player, why not just say it? You’re working for the license payers. They’re paying your wages.
“That’s the first thing I decided when I started, that I was going to call the shots as I saw them. If I believed it — Michel Platini was a classic example of it — I was allowed to do it. I wasn’t taken off air. I think that’s the way it should be done.
“RTÉ do that with their rugby analysis as well. George Hook is very critical and a good analyst and that’s what people want. That’s what I want when I’m watching other sports. It’s the only way to judge it. I want to know the guys are being real and that’s what we try to do. The reward is our audience numbers, which are very high.”
The Platini incident happened during the 1984 European Championship when Dunphy claimed the current Uefa president was a good player rather a great one.
The tournament ended with Platini as top scorer with nine goals and France as champions. Whoops.
At the time the panel was made up of just Dunphy and O’Herlihy.
New blood was needed. Enter John Giles and, eventually, Liam Brady.
“I asked them to get John in,” Dunphy recalls. “Before John went on television, when he was a manager or player, he hated the press. He wasn’t very quotable. He was no Roy Keane. You’d be pushed to get a bit of copy. They didn’t think he would be good but I knew he would be because his knowledge was so deep and he’s an entirely different person to me, which is good because it balances it out.
“And Liam came along and Liam is great. Assertive, knowledgeable, spiky. None of us ever know when it’s coming from Liam. We really don’t know. It’s great fun.”
O’Herlihy’s retirement after Brazil marks the end of an era for the panel and Dunphy admits the anchor will be hugely misses.
“I will be sad because he and I have been doing this together since 1978. It was just the two of us for six years and then John came [for the 1986 World Cup]. He [Bill] is a terrific type of man, brings a good journalist’s mind to it. He’s always very professional, very prepared and he’s been extremely helpful to all of us.
“He allows us to fight, contradicts us if we say something that doesn’t strike him as right and he’s challenging to work with. That’s good. Liam is as well. I like that, it’s a nice environment.”
That willingness to let pundits have their head was never more evident than Italia 90 when Dunphy was hugely critical of Jack Charlton’s tactics.
Time has mellowed Dunphy’s views somewhat.
“I’ve been thinking about this recently and with time I suppose I can understand why everyone was happy. Everyone was having barbecues and talking to their neighbours and having street parties, celebrating the fact we’d been to something we’d only dreamed of. The football was garbage but I didn’t see the whole picture.
“The bigger picture was Ireland was having a ball. I was going around saying: ‘This is crap’. I was doing football analysis at a party. Not a very good idea. But time has given me a little bit of perspective.”
However the contradictory side of his personality surfaces when he insists he has no regrets.
“Would I do it all again the way I did it? Yes. I thought there was a football case to be made. Jack was entirely wrong. 1990 was the worst World Cup in the history of the game and they changed the backpass rule after that. It was an intolerable era in soccer.”
Looking ahead to Brazil, Dunphy expects Argentina and Spain to reach the final, with the current champions retaining their crown, and quips an odd reason to be dismissive of Brazil’s chances.
“Nobody will ever win a World Cup with a striker called Fred!”
As for the dark horses, he believes Colombia, despite the absence of Falcao, could go far and feels Uruguay will be dangerous if Luis Suarez is fully fit.
He suggests the tournament may open up for France and expects big things of Belgium.
“France are in a really easy group and look certain to get to the quarter-finals. They’ve got Benzema. Varane from Real Madrid, Cabaye, Lloris and a very good coach in Deschamps so France could be a danger and obviously Belgium. They have quality all around the pitch. A very good leader, Vincent Kompany, good solid team with talent up front, Hazard, Lukaku… Everyone’s talked about Belgium for a long time.”
And his thoughts on sex bans?
“When I was a player for Millwall in my distinguished career we were instructed never to have sex after Wednesday.
“No WAGs at any tournament, I wouldn’t have them. Lock them away. No sex. No access to anything that would likely get you any way excited.”
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