‘RUBY A MASTER PUNDIT’
T Spillane can only smile at recent furore when Joanne ntwell dared to ask Dónal Óg sack a question on live TV. eople got seriously outraged social media at Cantwell doing r job and her temerity in asking sack to explain his comments. unday Game Live host Cantwell allenged the RTE pundit, former rk All-Ireland winner and GPA esident about his comment that Tailteann Cup was a Grand tional for also-rans.
People saying she sprung s on him and it’s unfair,” says illane.
I worked on the old regime with chael Lyster and the new regime der Declan McBennett (RTE ad of Sport) and Joanne.
In the old regime there was no ript, no plan, no topics, there s no idea where we were going. The only thing would be, chael just before going on air uld say who he was going to k the first question to.
(Joe) Brolly would be pulling m by the trouser leg to say, ‘Ask the first question’ because ’d know if I got the first quesn I’d take up the time and if he t the first question, he’d take up time.
Usually when that happened ster would go for (Colm)
Rourke.
It was like being on a magic cart ride, a magical mystery tour. u didn’t know where you were ing and Lyster was brilliant in centre of it.
Now there’s a pre-production o
Regime
meeting, two hours before going on air. The producer is there.
“Sometimes the Head of Sport will be there, going through fine tooth and comb, every item in the running order.
“Dónal Óg’s question, under the new regime, I’d be shocked if it wasn’t gone over in the production meeting.
“While it was a hurling weekend, she was bringing it up in his role as President of the GPA rather than anything else and he had to answer it, which he didn’t.
“I asked Michael Lyster, would he have asked the same questions. He said, ‘I would’.”
“Joanne got an awful lambasting for asking the question of the President of the GPA about a competition that he insulted where over 25 per cent of his members play. That was it.”
higher standard of everything.
“Were there great matches in the past? There might be a few.
“Was The Sunday Game better when Brolly and O’Rourke were there?
Social
“When we were doing it, social media used to go into convulsions, saying that the three of us should be gotten rid of, that we had gone past our sell-by date – boom, boom, boom.
“And the minute we leave there is a complete sumersault and they are all saying, ‘Jesus Christ, we need them back’.”
He is laughing hard at this point. Brolly is due down Templenoe
way in a few days’ time and Spillane can’t wait.
They might have a podcast-off with Brolly’s new production The Free State making waves. “He’s trying to solve the world,”laughs Spillane.
But is he listening to it?
“God no, I don’t, I am not into podcasts,”he laughs.“I listen to our own all right.
“My wife will listen to all of them and she says if they’re good or bad or whatever.
“She’s after getting me a new microphone. She said she wasn’t happy with the sound last week.”
One thing he’s adamant about is he (above) (below)
The Sunday Game on RTE wouldn’t want to be one of the younger breed of pundits starting out again.
“Ah Jesus, no thanks. I see it with Tubridy and the Late Late, and particularly with the sport and the social media abuse that they are subjected to now, it’s not worth the hassle.
“Social media wasn’t a major worry but it was starting to become an itch.
“For three days after, if I just said, ‘Today is Tuesday’, ten per cent of the people would agree, 20 per cent would disagree.
“And the other 70 per cent would call me a w**ker or a b ***** ks, and I should be put out to grass and de de de de de, and that was it
“I have no issue, no problem if you deal with my argument.
“When I went to television, the one thing is, it’s subjective.
“You might be right.You’re probably wrong, but it’s subjective. I always try to give an honest opinion based on providing evidence to back it up on whatever some team was doing.
“I mean, social media just doesn’t deal with the argument. It just goes for the man instead of the ball.
Annoy
“And it’s personal and it’s savage. It was starting to annoy me. My kids and my wife were always watching it and reading it and I said, ‘Do you know, they don’t deserve this’.
“I don’t miss the savage social media abuse you’d be getting for two or three days after The
Sunday Game.
“I am sort of in a good space at the moment. I miss the good adrenalin burst of live games.
“Down through the years as a teacher, playing football with Kerry, and The Sunday Game I left them all of my own accord. I told them I was leaving.
“The one thing, when I leave something, it’s gone. The chapter is closed. No going back.
“And I’ll write a new chapter in my life. I had blank pages to write it and the podcast is something to add into that.”
PAT Spillane has a laugh at the idea of inclusivity in sports punditry.
He can see one cohort of society that are being excluded from it.
“I know inclusivity is a buzzword and it is great – we must have everybody involved as a GAA organisation, as pundits, as everything,” says the Templenoe man.
“In this great world of inclusivity the greatest act of exclusivity is being practised where the elderly person who reaches 65 or 66 is got rid of.
“Inclusivity, my backside. This is exclusivity.
“You look at American TV and you see Walter Cronkite or whoever and Jesus Christ they are in their late 70s and they are still stars on Primetime TV.
“In Ireland, ‘Ah Jesus go, 65, we need the young. They’ll relate to them’.”
Spillane continues: “The problem is, young people aren’t watching television. It’s the old people who are still watching television.
“And the old people react more to what old people say.
Majority
“Oh jeepers. The majority of TV watchers aren’t interested in people standing up with a gizmo and drawing arrows everywhere.You have lost them. They are gone. No debate.
“No doubt about it, in television the old fellas are gone. The Ted Walshes, the Dunphys, the Gileses.
“Without fear or contradiction, the only analysis I’d listen to, I swear to god – not soccer, not football, they’re all generic and bland. “And I’d text it to say, ‘f**k it, I thought this was brilliant, I thought it was good television, Ruby (Walsh, inset) analysing the tactics of a race.
“Going through a video and showing the little subtle things the jockey did. “I like that and Ruby can deliver it with a bit of fun and crack, and you know he’s been there, done that.”