Goodnight and God bless Bill

Looking around Bill O’Herlihy’s office raised an immediate question.

On the desk were mountains of documents, but no computer. In the corner was a small, bulky television set with a dusty VCR player underneath it. Sitting at the table in the middle of the room sipping tea was a man in his 70s, pawing through every one of the day’s newspapers.

That was the confusing contradiction that needed explaining because so much about O’Herlihy belonged to a different era, yet still he was at the forefront of sports journalism all these years on from a start in a now unrecognisable Ireland. Eventually the answer that revealed itself was that he was simply and subtly so good at his job that it had made him timeless.