Tommie talks about sport’s role in his life and how county team togged out in his home
TOMMIE GORMAN, the Sligo man who recently retired as RTÉ’s Northern Editor, gave an insight into the big part that sport has played in his life and career in a recent interview. Apart from the obvious things like his famous interview with Roy Keane, his documentary on Sean Fallon, his love of Sligo Rovers, he also told how his father bought their home on Cairns Road because it offered a great view into Marckievicz Park, how on one occasion a county team togged out in their sitting-room and how he worked as part of Mayo Gaelic football team manager John O’Mahony’s backroom team.
In the in-depth interview in the Irish Examiner, Kieran Shannon wrote: “Long before he was constantly beamed into our living rooms or he found himself in O’Mahony’s dressing room, or caught Roy after he’d stormed out of Ireland’s World Cup build-up in Saipan, Gorman learned a living room and a dressing-room could be one and the same thing.”
Tommie said: “We were brought up on Cairns Road, right across from Markievicz Park. There were 12 semi-detached houses and we had the last one on the row. My father [Joe] was dead before I made the connection. When you’re a child, you always think of your father as an old fella and never with the instincts of a young guy.
“But of course the reason he bought the house was that it was basically a corporate box for all the games in Markievicz! We could literally see out onto the pitch in front of us.
“There were no dressing rooms in Markievicz when it was first built so this one day when I was very young, this county team togged out in our living room. I can’t remember who they were, just that they had mud on their boots and Mum [Maureen] was going nuts but Dad was saying, ‘Ah, let them fire ahead!’”
But Shannon pointed out that while Tommie’s father “loved his GAA so much it determined where he bought a house, Tommy and his siblings were that bit more partial to soccer”.
“Even when they’d play on the hallowed pitch of Markievicz Park their preference was for ground football, though any time they caught sight of the caretaker, they’d immediately pick it up and start fisting it, for fear it would be confiscated.”
Tommie said: “There was definitely a very strict demarcation zone there with the Ban. For the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising fellas marched into Markievicz Park. That’s where the state and the national cause was being celebrated. There was always that connection between sport and politics.”
He recalled though that The Showgrounds had little or no issue with Gaelic football being played there. Before Markievicz opened, The Showgrounds hosted a National Football League quarter-final against Kerry where Seán Fallon buried two goals past the legendary Dan O’Keeffe before he’d go on to star with Celtic. And Tommie felt it was “natural kids from a garrison town would side with the garrison game”.
“In national school we’d play Gaelic street leagues but the best players were invariably from the working-class estates. But once they got into their teens those lads were mostly lost to the GAA. The perception was that Gaelic was for the buffs [rural lads] and soccer was for the townies.” Tommie recalled that his alma mater Summerhill College, being a diocesan college, was naturally a Gaelic footballing powerhouse but it also accommodated basketball.
“Then there was a teacher they had, Fr Michael Devine, only they all called him Ricky Devine after he came back from a summer in America. It was Ricky who introduced wrestling to the school, thus allowing a lot of kids to claim they were international athletes, but he’d an even more ingenious idea – to make Summerhill perennial All-Ireland soccer contenders.” Tommie remembered: “As a school we kind of came up with a side pact with Sligo Grammar. We’d field a team in rugby and they’d beat the tar out of us to become Connacht champions and then it’d be vice-versa in soccer. Back then soccer wasn’t that widespread in schools in Connacht.”
Paul McGee, a former Irish international who’d play top-flight football with QPR, was on one of those Summerhill teams that won a schools soccer All-Ireland.
“Gorman himself wasn’t but still he was there, a self-confessed decent tarmac, five-a-side player but useless on a full grass pitch, he became the team’s chief bagman and fundraiser. And so that allowed him to travel to places like Lille and Liverpool and then Glasgow after Seán Fallon, the same man who shot past Dan O’Keeffe and played for and assisted Jock Stein, made sure to look after his own.”
Shannon wrote that “Gorman could write a book on his own travels and adventures involving Sligo (Rovers)”. Tommie said: “The first time I was ever on a train was for a 1969 FAI Cup match in Longford in the snow. They were non-league at the time but they beat us, 1-0. Fellas were burning the flag. It was a disaster. But then the following year we had this big saga with Cork Hibs in the semi-final and then we had a final and replays against Bohs. That was my first time on a train to Dublin. It was magic.”
Shannon wrote how when Tommie decided, ahead of his final exams, to take a job he was offered with the Western Journal, he reckoned he could always repeat his exams in September, so he took the job.
“But then in September there was another dilemma. Rovers were playing Red Star Belgrade in the first round of the European Cup. So what do you think he did? Sit the exams or have a peep behind the Iron Curtain to see the Rovers as well? Was it even a question?
“It meant selling some amount of ads for the Journal to fund the trip and also involved cutting some corners as well as costs, too. Contrary to every union protocol at the time, he doubled up as a photographer and was down on pitchside when the teams came out to 30,000 fans.”
Tommie recalled the occasion: “There was like a moat around the pitch but when I turned around to go back into the stand the bridge had already been drawn up! So I went down with my camera to [Rovers goalkeeper] Alan Patterson and I was talking to him all through the game. ‘Jesus, it’s still nil-nil, we’ve a chance here!’ It was just a dream, dream time.”
Once he landed the job as RTÉ’s European correspondent, he found himself in Valletta to cover Ireland beating Malta to qualify for our firstever World Cup. The following spring he was going round Sardinia and Sicily, showcasing where Jackie’s Army would be taking over. By the end of June he was in Rome.
His sports beat extended to more than the national team. Throughout the 1990s he was often part of RTÉ’s coverage of European club football, especially the fortunes of Manchester United.
It was through that he got to meet Roy Keane, who was the subject of one of Tommie’s most famous interviews, described by Shannon as “the scoop of the century”.
Tommie put securing it down to “resilience, if you stay around eventually you’ll get it, whereas if you’re off the pitch it won’t happen” and he spoke of how they spent a lot of time hanging around his neighbourhood that week. Tommie’s connection with John O’Mahony was forged in his time working with the Western Journal and “the supplier of the local notes for Ballaghaderreen was a school teacher and future TD by the name of John O’Mahony” and when O’Mahony became Mayo manager Tommie became his video man.
Shannon wrote: “Back then there was no such thing as analysing or motivational videos, but between his nature and his job Gorman offered both. In 1989, the same year Gorman went to Brussels, replacing Éamonn Lawlor as RTÉ’s European correspondent, Mayo got back to Croke Park on All-Ireland final day for the first time in 38 years. In the lead-up to their semi-final win over Tyrone, Gorman had put together a video featuring slow-motion footage of Frank Noone being stretchered off in the Connacht final replay and raising a Parsons-like defiant fist to his teammates and supporters. The accompanying music was Dire Straits.
“He kept working with O’Mahony all through the years, behind and away from the cameras. Leitrim in ’94. Galway in ’98 – though he couldn’t be in Croke Park that day because it clashed with the German election when Gerhard Schroder succeeded Helmut Kohl as chancellor. He was there in 2001 when they won it again.”
As to Tommie’s future plans, Shannon wrote: “Gorman has shuffled off the pitch, outside of a documentary he’s making on the healthcare he and others now receive since his first brush with cancer over a quarter of a century ago, he has no other plans now that he’s retired in his 65th year. None outside of sport, that is.”
As a Spurs fan, he plans to go to see them in London when he can but “these days he’s gorging on the WATTCHLOI pass”.
Tommie said: “It’s one of the great things about the pandemic: you’re able to see your team’s away games now. I’d even prefer now to watch Bohs and Pat’s than West Ham and Southampton.
“Because it’s our league. I think it’s wonderful. To me Rovers are the absolute DNA of Sligo. We’ve a beautiful ground. It’s owned by the people. It’s in the centre of town. I can’t drive past The Showgrounds without feeling something that’s beyond pride.” Shannon concluded: “Rovers know what makes him tick. For years Gorman has served on fundraising and management committees for the club and continued to pen articles for their website as enthusiastically as that student in the Rathmine years. When the club’s grounds re-open, the 500th tile on The Showgrounds Wall will be unveiled and dedicated to him.
“A part of him even fancies playing again.”
“There’s a game in Sligo every Sunday on the beach on Rosses Point. These lads now are real townies, real Sligo Rovers guys. There’s one fella who’s got his two hips replaced but he’s still there. So I’m seriously thinking of going back to that!” Tommie said.