ONE DAY LIKE THIS... WEEKEND WARRIOR IS PRODUCING THE GOODS
LIVE radio is a hectic gig at the best of t i mes, but Neil Treacy revels in the chaos. The Limerick native is a man of many talents on Off The Ball, splitting his duties between broadcasting, producing the weekend programmes while commentating at rugby games up and down the country.
The workload and planning which goes into the Saturday and Sunday instalments is vast. Booking guests, organising reporters, liaising with the digital team and managing live streams are just some of the boxes which need to be ticked before the red light goes on in the studio. Off The Ball’s popular Saturday show runs from 1pm-5pm but the work begins long before lunchtime.
‘I’d be in three hours before the show and that three hours absolutely zooms by,’ says Treacy.
In more normal times, guests would arrive into their Dublin city headquarters for shows such as the Saturday panel. Getting panelists in and out during a busy live show would present its own challenges.
‘It would make a great challenge on that game show, The Cube, doing all of that in four minutes would be a fine challenge ,’ Treacy jokes.
Now, the logistical challenges are different in this Covid era. Most guests appear on Off The Ball via phone or Skype, which presents a whole new set of potential problems during a live broadcast.
‘You’re getting in touch with them to test the line just to make sure that their audio sounds ok and their video looks ok because the last thing you want to happen as soon as you go on air or there’s two minutes to an ad break and you realise there’s a problem with their audio quality or their internet isn’t stable and their video is jumping up and down and you can’t hear them correctly. So, it’s about getting all those little pieces sorted.’
Treacy and his colleagues plan extensively while always making sure there’s a ‘Plan B’ in their locker should a live broadcast go to ground. The show must always go on.
But there are times when best laid plans go astray. The Saturday morning of July 11 was one such instance.
Treacy and Co had returned to their homes on Friday evening, satisfied that their Saturday show was in good shape. The following morning they woke up to the news that Jack Charlton had passed away.
Only one topic would dominate the airwaves for the next week or so. An icon of Irish football and Irish society had been l ost and Treacy and the rest of the Off The Ball team had to start from scratch.
‘We would have all come home on a Friday evening with the entire s how mapped out,’ he recalls.
‘We would have our three guests for our Saturday panel lined up — we would have spoken to them. We would have done a whole week’s work leading up to this Saturday show and we wake up t hat morning and you see something as big as Jack Charlton has died and immediately, it’s the nature of the thing, the entire running order is straight into the bin.
‘You’re into the car as quick as you can and heading to the office as quick as you can and on the fly there’s a handful of ye trying to figure out how we’re going to do this, how are we going to approach this?
“We ditched a whole show the day Jack died”
“It’s all about getting the little pieces right”
‘We have three hours until we’re on air and it was just a case of hitting the phones.
‘I remember that day, we literally ditched everything that we had planned for that show and spent the entire four hours, from 1pm-5pm, just speaking to people who knew him, who had played under him and played with him.’
When things had calmed down, Treacy and the rest of the team could reflect on a job well done.
‘You know when you finish a show like that and you’re happy with the way it went and you’re thinking you did someone like him justice and you handled it all properly and given the short amount of time you had that you put it all together well. There’s a real adrenaline buzz coming off something like that.’