Eamon Dunphy’s greatest trick? Staying relevant

By Brendan O’Brien

The torrent of clips and catchphrases spawned by news of Eamon Dunphy’s and RTÉ’s parting of ways after 40 years yesterday didn’t just highlight the cultural impact made by the ex-Millwall footballer in his role as football analyst.

It spoke of an uncanny ability to remain relevant, even if the shtick did get old in later years.

His declaration during the World Cup that Brazilian — and Roma — goalkeeper Alisson was being linked with possible moves to Europe drew derision. Assertions that he ‘watches a lot of Spanish football’ invariably attracted groans.

Some would only ever see him as a spoofer — a word he used himself more than once — but his rapport with the likes of Bill O’Herlihy, John Giles, Liam Brady and Graeme Souness was an essential ingredient in a dish that was lapped up by astonishing numbers for so long.

He started out at a time when RTÉ’s coverage was the only show in town for most of us in the country at a time when there was just the one telecoms and electricity suppliers and the behemoth in Montrose was the monopoly when it came to ‘the telly’.

Full-time colour broadcasting only kicked off in Ireland in 1976, two years before his World Cup punditry debut, and yet he leaves now at a time of high definition digital TV.

His has been a residency spanning the Stone Age and the Space Age.

He survived and thrived despite the invasion of the English channels, the Sky revolution, the hundreds of other pundits used by RTÉ, his spell as ‘persona non grata’ after the pen-throwing incident in Italia ’90 and a ‘tired and emotional’ appearance in 2002.

All of which brings to mind his brilliant riposte to Souness when the Scot took exception to the dig that he ‘didn’t know what he was talking about’ during a heated debate over Arsene Wenger’s transfer policies and asked which clubs Dunphy had managed.

“I’ve never managed anywhere, I’ve managed to stay alive for 63-and-a-half years, baby.”

Longevity in itself isn’t necessarily something to be lauded but it requires a certain talent to remain relevant and wanted and as polarising as Dunphy has been in a meat grinder of an industry with a notoriously short attention span.

He knew he was Marmite and he laid it on thick, finding new ways to entertain and irritate with the same approach.

“There can be a lot of longevity in the repetition of things being told again and again in a variety of ways,” said the American author Kate Dicamillo.

The same could be said of every sports analyst on any channel but Dunphy was integral to the nation’s digestion of era-defining events in places as diverse as Stuttgart, Genoa, and Saipan. His was one of the voices that drive and shaped narratives.

His departure this week comes on the back of the late O’Herlihy’s retirement after the 2014 World Cup and Giles’ parting of ways with RTÉ in the wake of Euro 2016.

Only Liam Brady, the last of the original band to sign on, in the 1990s, remains of that fab four. The game Dunphy pontificated on has changed.

There are no more one-club men and he himself is the last of a dying breed who will hold court on the same station for that period of time.

The reliance on a small band of familiar faces has gone the way of black boots, cotton shirts, and brylcreemed hair.

RTÉ are among the broadcasters to have opened the studio doors wider. Younger faces are being asked their opinions, more and more women among them. Declan McBennett, the new Head of Sport at RTÉ spoke about just that trend recently.

“They have to be, one, credible, two, have an opinion that inflates them above the generic opinion that you are going to hear on a game and, three, have the ability to articulate that opinion in a broadcast environment.”

Not everyone agreed with Dunphy. More than a few questioned his credibility but no-one could argue he didn’t know how to make a statement.