I like Richard Dunne as an analyst. I love his downbeat, jaded demeanour.
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You aren’t dealing with staffers though, these people are contracted in and may not be available.
Keeping it in the family!
He always looks like around half 9 in the evening of a wedding he’s attending - dinner ate, speeches over, more pints into him, with the dancing to come, along with more pints.
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Kerr is like the lad that was invited to the afters. So he is still a bit fresh but ratty he wasn’t invited to the whole thing. Just so he could say he was at it and then crib about the grub.
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By all accounts, Richard very much likes a pint (unsurprisingly).
Kerr is the lad giving out about the shite music. Thin Lizzy then comes on and he does a power slide across the room. When the Abba medley starts, he grabs his coat and leaves
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Richard Dunne always reminds me of a Dublin bus driver.
Despite living in Monte Carlo, he perpetually has the demeanour of a customer in a garage on the Long Mile Road who expected his car to be ready today but has been informed that a part has to be ordered in and it won’t be ready for at least another week, and he’s going to have to get the Luas home. Also his daughter is after getting detention in school and the dog has to be taken to the vet, and he’s no car to bring it.
You can take the boy out of Tallaght…
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Correct. They could have got rid of him at 45.
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He’s almost too much on that side - and comes out with some bizarre comments at times. He once claimed that Leigh Griffiths was among the best finishers he’s ever seen.
Great player himself though.
I liked Giles for many years. I thought he had a great basic football knowledge.
But he refused to move out of a view of football from 40 or 50 years ago. He was extremely arrogant and grumpy in that too - ‘football hasn’t changed’. It hasn’t to some extent but it has to a much greater one.
His arrogance extended to him not bothering his hole to research anything and rely on his preconceived superiority in terms of knowing the game. I think he did know it but you cannot just rely on that.
Central defenders moving into a box midfield would feel his wrath now.
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Giles and Dunphy were pundits rather than analysts. People would tune in to entertained rather than be informed. Loughnane and Cyril were in same vein.
The modern panel is all mostly people trying to be analysts but not having the knowledge, experience or communication skills to do it.
I’d be interested to see RTÉ post match viewing figures for all sports now versus the heyday.
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I hear him the odd time on OTB,every couple of minutes he says “in my day”.Well Johnny it’s not your day anymore.Its actually taped during the day most probably because it’s heavily edited and Johnny’s probably in bed by half seven these days.
The RTE panel was a product of luck. Eamon Dunphy is a singular figure in Irish association football history. He is pretty much the only former Irish footballer who had things to say about wider society and he’s certainly the only former Irish footballer to say those things in the way he did.
Dunphy was the foundation stone of everything.
Bill O’Herlihy had got his journalistic wings clipped and was shunted into the toy department. He was the first major building block. With those two in place, the framework was in place. It only needed the decorations.
Then Giles. Then Brady. Those figures are important in the order I’ve listed them.
Only Joe Brolly is a comparable figure to Dunphy in sports punditry on this island. I think it’s a terrible pity he has been shunted aside.
Roy Keane has elements of Dunphy and Brolly and the status of Giles and Brady, but while he has a basic intelligence he doesn’t have the versatility and roundedness of the first two and he doesn’t have the analytical nature of the latter two.
Sadlier and Cunningham are about the best of a bad lot now. Millwall. The font of Irish football punditry. Keep Didi, get the Honey Monster in, get Tommy Martin in, and that’s your panel. Give it time to grow.
Controversial opinion: In the absence of Tommy Martin, and he will be absent, Ger Gilroy would be the best choice to anchor a new RTE panel.
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He’d be dreadful, trying to fit himself into every discussion. You need a facilitator like Bill
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It was a lot easier to facilitate when Dunphy was on a panel. It’s not so easy to facilitate when you don’t have the Energizer bunny of punditry on the panel. You need somebody to insert themselves, stir, and drive. It’s all about the raw material you have to work with and the raw material now is not a patch on what it was.
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Dunphy couldn’t analyse a match to save his life. In fact many of his soundbites were poisonous, outside of the football sphere as well.
Brolly is like an imitation of Dunphy. I will give him the DUP criticism.
Both of them are arseholes but Dunphy was the original and his rants were often ‘from the heart’ in his own naive, uninformed way.
TV3 should make a big play for the rights next time round.