If that was great, I reckon @Tim_Riggins might be right
I went to games with my oul’ fella. He was always a transistor radio man. He’d bring it mainly to keep up to date with other games but he’d listen to the commentary of what was going on at the game he was at too.
It was very important if you were at, say, the 1976 Leinster Football Final between Dublin and Meath, to keep up to date with goings on at the Ulster Football Final replay between Derry and Cavan in Clones and listen to live commentary of Sean Drea’s Olympic single sculls final in Montreal.
It was very important if you were at, say, the 1994 Ulster football final in Clones, to keep up to date with goings on at Croke Park in the Leinster hurling final between Offaly and Wexford which Micheál O’Muircheartaigh would be commentating on, or Greg Allen’s updates from the Open at Turnberry where David Feherty was making a charge up the leaderboard and not just cementing his position as Best Of The Irish (BOTI), but “now putting real pressure on the leaders Jesper Parnevik and Nick Price”.
This was a tradition I embraced myself in the late 1990s though I used a music player with a radio function rather than a traditional transistor radio and preferred to keep one earphone in and one out.
Radio commentary is like music. It’s about times, places, sounds, people, feelings.
The specialness of Micheál O’Muircheartaigh’s radio commentaries were that you could be anywhere for them.
They were the background hum of gardening, washing the car, of kicking ball on the street, of kicking ball in the Fifteen Acres, of Sunday drives, of walking in the mountains, or of watching what he was describing unfolding 40 yards in front of you. His voice was best heard on a transistor radio, or a car radio, or a tinny ye olde radio out in the kitchen. His voice was the background rhythm of the Irish landscape and Irish life. Always there. The beauty of the GAA is that it’s always there like a friend who always calls around at the same time on a Sunday, and the radio is the primary medium of that friendship.
The specialness of his voice is that it was a tie that bound you to family members now deceased. It was a voice that bound you into a communal culture that said “this is us”. But it wasn’t an exclusionary culture, it was a culture that said “here’s what we have to offer, come and share it”. His voice was the constant background accompaniment to my relationship with my oul’ fella, with my two grannies in whose houses I’d hear his commentaries. He even taught my oul’ fella in school.
His voice was the sound of summer on the breeze. In the era before live television every week, this was a massive thing. His voice represents the same things the music you love represents.
Sports commentary in general is a much underrated art and the greatest practitioners are true artists.
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When Michael McMullen goes to his eternal reward I for one look forward to how highly you’ll place him on your inexhaustative list of Saturday afternoon radio sports presenters/phone in shows
I don’t think you had Trevor Welsh on your other list either 
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If you attended GAA fixtures in the 80s you’d never be far from a transistor radio guy who’d keep you up to date on proceedings elsewhere
Trevor is an alright sort. My buddy does a bit of work with him on TalkSport
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Transistor radio heaven
He wasn’t on the list.
I didn’t particularly like MOM as a commentator tbh (he’d struggle to make my top 17) but I had time for him as an all-round GAA personality
It was like watching the game on the windscreen is a great line
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I remember when I was on the dole around 2010 and watching Ireland AM quite regularly. There was this small kind of whimsical Donegal chap in his fifties with the hint of lavender about him; he used to describe events in the soaps and celebrity gossip every week.
I’ll tell you now, that man wasn’t a good commentator, he was a great commentator. His knowledge was extensive but he wore it lightly and he had a lovely timbre to his voice. A real life historian, forecaster, measurer and all round savant of all matters soap and celeb.
Anyway, one morning I got up around half nine to listen to my guy before getting on to SSN, and to my horror he had been replaced by this munter ‘soap addict’ they had pulled off the couch. It would now be that soap and celebrity gossip were discreet areas with separate time slots. “Bastards, I said”; That was me done and I have never watched Ireland AM since.
Anyway, the whole experience taught me the importance of a good commentator and the great Donegal man would make any list of mine.
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He had Bruce from daan onda for the Compromise Rules
Noel Cunningham is your man
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I tell you, he believed Phil would get back with Sharon when there was no reason in the world to believe it; and in due course he was proved right.
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I stopped reading at Ryle Nugent
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I don’t think I’ve ever heard a great American sports commentator. Perhaps it’s because US television is so stiflingly corporate and American sports themselves are so stop start and boring. Pat Summerall and Dick Enberg are probably about the best I can think of. Americans don’t do sports commentary, and they don’t do narrating quality documentary series.
I used to mildly enjoy Jim Nantz’s cameos on the BBC’s Open coverage but that was probably down to the novelty and weirdness factor.
It was like two separate worlds colliding, like when Sean Óg De Paor of Carraroe would go over to mark Wayne Carey of North Melbourne in an International Rules match, or when Jurgen Klinsmann first played for Tottenham Hotspur, or when Declan D’Arcy first appeared in a Dublin shirt or when Raymond van Barneveld played in the pdc world championship at the Circus Tavern, or when Louth played Tipperary in Clonmel in 2001 in the first ever All-Ireland football qualifier, or when Arnold from Diff’rent Strokes would guest appear in character in an episode of The Facts Of Life.
But all these things lost their novelty very quickly.
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Where did you see facts of life?
I don’t think that was ever on Irish or British TV
He’s a hotelier. What’s the name of the ONE fancy hotel in Donegal? He’s the Donegal equivalent of that Francis chap that has the hotels down in Kerry or Clare or somewhere.
And do you know what? Noel is now a guest/holiday fill in presenter in the Today Show on RTÉ with FOTF Laura Woods when Maura & Daithi are off.
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Sky One circa 1990/91
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Harvey’s point. He does bits and pieces for them. Saw him doing some sort of talent show when we were there one weekend
Typical, stag in Dingle this weekend. Place is going to be overrun now with mourners and well wishers.
This had tilted me to the @Flano side on this schmuch
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