Tommie on life as a real legend of journalism
From Sligo Journal editor to correspondent for RTÉ, Cairns Road native Tommie Gorman has left a huge legacy in Irish media. He spoke to Gerry McLaughlin
THIS IS a small part of the story of one Tommie Gorman, one of Ireland’s top journalists and one of Sligo’s greatest supporters. For almost 45 years, Tommie has worn all the T-shirts, told all the stories, walked and talked with all the captains and kings while never forgetting where he is from.
Among some of the major stories he has covered has been that interview with Roy Keane in 2002. It was the top television programme of that month ahead of the country’s General Election coverage of a few weeks earlier. Tommie also quizzed Seán Quinn in a rare interview given by the controversial Fermanagh businessman. And he had a pretty searching chat with Gerry Adams.
Those are real scoops. But they are also a measure of the esteem in which he is held by the big hitters in society.
Following the murder of Michaela McAreavey, Tommie went to Mauritius to cover the trial for RTÉ News.
He was also awarded European Of The Year in 2001 for his radio and television on EU institutions. And Tommie was given an honorary masters degree by NUI Galway in 2009.
In those years he was a colleague of the then British journalist (now Prime Minister) Boris Johnson and has some interesting insights into that controversial character and his relationship with the truth. In 1994, Tommie was diagnosed with cancer. He made a moving documentary about that experience, which helped him cope with the hammer blow he had been dealt by fate.
But it is his brave stance before the deadly disease that he is constantly living with that is truly remarkable.
As he told one publication: “I find the cancer the most liberating force or factor because it is the thing we all run away from, the fact that none of us gets out of here alive, the fact that we are all going to die.
“I am lucky as I have beaten the rap in many respects.
“I was diagnosed in 1994 and through a series of lucky breaks I got myself to Sweden and journalism helped me on that journey.”
Tommie has liver secondaries since 1994 and he gets injections every 28 days.
LAST Saturday, Tommie told this writer that but for his treatment in Sweden he would have died. Yet despite this type of Sword of Damocles, Tommie chose not to yield but to go out and do what he loves to do and does so well. That takes almost unimaginable courage.
A few weeks ago, he spoke movingly of his condition on RTÉ. And he was always much more than an astute observer of major events from Belfast to Brussels and various other “big stories”. Tommie was much more nuanced and used comment to great effect without ever losing his sense of proportion. He began his long career by covering away Sligo Rovers matches.
But his first real job was with the Western Journal which later became the Sligo Journal. There he did everything under the watchful, paternal eye of the late great John Healy.
Tommie ended up as managing editor.
From there he became North West correspondent for RTÉ from 1980 to 1989. He said it would not have happened only that his late mother Maureen drove all the way to Ballina to give him the application from.
In those years he was first exposed to the Northern Ireland Troubles in Derry, where he first encountered Martin McGuinness.
Tommie paid a poignant visit to McGuinness when the latter was gravely ill with cancer in 2017.
In 1989 Tommie was appointed European correspondent for RTÉ. He covered the big summits, the big rows, the big personalities and he got to know and respect fellow Sligo man Ray MacSharry, who was an outstanding EU Commissioner.
Tommie is a born raconteur and has a forensic memory for days and dates. Listening to him as he is out on a Saturday morning stroll, it is like listening to the recent history of Sligo, Northern Ireland and Europe. There must be several books in Tommie from his vast career at the centre of so many major events. The late Seán Fallon of Sligo Rovers and Celtic was another great hero of Tommie. Tommie arranged for Seán to be finally given those precious international Irish caps before he passed away – which is something special. Tommie retired from RTÉ last month. But he is involved with his beloved Sligo Rovers on its finance committee and is working for a website with Dion Fanning called The Currency, where his pithy pen and vast knowledge are being shared. Tommie is passionate about his native place and there is no doubt that he
will play a big role in the town he loves so well in the near future. Tommie was born in April 1956 in Cairns Road in a family of four. His parents were Joe and Maureen Gorman.
Mary, Michael, Tommie and the late Paula grew up in a house that had a grandstand view of Markievicz Park, the great GAA bastion in a garrison town where soccer holds the hearts of is citizens.
And even though soccer is stitched deep in Tommie’s soul he has vivid memories of seeing some great Gaelic teams and legends in Markievicz Park in the 1960s.
It was a playground for Tommie and his young friends while GAA officials were “trying to preserve it for the matches”.
TOMMIE said: “I have some great memories of all the fantastic GAA club games played there. “I saw St Pat’s Dromard, Mickey Kearins in his heyday, as well as Easkey Sea Blues. I saw great players like Cathal Cawley and the Caffreys from west Sligo.
“Some of the toughest games involved the gardaí and between psychiatric hospitals.
“They were wonderful games. And then there were great fundraisers in the park where Hell Drivers in cars drove through hoops of flames. The cars took off on platforms and it was very exciting.”
Tommie remembers the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising of 1916, when old IRA men gathered in the park named after one of Ireland’s greatest republicans, Constance Markievicz. Tommie said: “We were a very close family and still are to this day. We had neighbours like the O’Donnells and the Hannaways. The Kieltys were great basketballers – two of the Kielty sisters played for Ireland. “In those days, there were just four houses beyond us and beyond that you had green fields. Now there are estates. “We used to go on expeditions up to the Holy Well and bring home bottles of water. We used to rob orchards where the Sligo Park Hotel is now. It was a completely different Sligo and it was a very happy time.”
“There was a great festival called the Sligo Sounds Festival in 1971 which was a real sign that times were changing in the country. It was a folk festival that took place in the Showgrounds.
“The band Fairport Convention were a big attraction. Horslips, the Chieftains, Louis Stewart and Seamus Tansey were also there.
“But all the tents and hippies with long hair and bright coloured clothing were in Markievicz Park.
“The GAA ground was packed with multi-coloured tents. There was a tap outside our house, and I remember people coming to wash under the tap.
“That is a very vivid memory of my early teens. I can visualise it and I can still see people putting their heads under the taps.” Tommy did not go to the gig in the Showgrounds as he got a job as a porter in the Sligo Park Hotel that weekend. He was 15. He said: “The town was full of visitors. There were stalls outside the shops where people were selling sandwiches and milk. The crowd in Sligo was a bit like the crowd that came to Knock in 1979 to see Pope John Paul II.
“It was a great event and wasn’t run for profit. Seán Fox and Paddy Smullen were two of the main organisers of that festival.
“We were ahead of the rest of the country. The Lisdoonvarna and Carnsore anti-nuclear events came later, but Sligo was special because it was the first of its kind.”
Something that will always be very special to Tommie Gorman is his very own Bit O’Red. He said: “Sligo Rovers were deep in our DNA. From long before I was born, Sligo Rovers were the makers of dreams in the town.
“My mother remembered Dixie Dean coming to Sligo and the crowds going up to see him. “And there were enlightened people in charge of Sligo Rovers from the very beginning – people who were always trying something different.
“So, we had a long tradition of having Scottish, English as well as Dublin players. These players from outside provided that extra bit of mystery and magic at the Showgrounds.
“Sometimes it did not work but for us the Showgrounds was our version of the London Palladium. The Showgrounds was showtime.
“There was always colour and great banter and always something to talk about until the next game.
“I learnt from a very young age was that there was a remarkable tradition of great slaggers on the terraces.
“One of the wittiest ones was a guy called Ray Cawley. To be anywhere in earshot of Ray Cawley was entertainment in itself. He had a remarkable turn of phrase and you could not but laugh as he was a fantastic slagger.”
Tommy remembers great games against Dundalk, Shamrock Rovers, Waterford, Limerick and Bohemians. He said: “I could name you 100 great players.
“I suppose Rovers did not really take off until the Tony Barkley-Ken Turner era at the end of the 1960s.
“I was 14 at the time of the wonderful FAI Cup final saga with Bohs. We went to Dalymount on the train.
“We were eventually beaten by Bohs. I met Joe Meldrum the other day on the street, and I can remember sitting in a carriage with him, my older brother Michael and the late Martin Higgins.
‘The trains in themselves were an adventure in those days. “If you got there early enough you had your own compartment with the sliding doors. “I remember getting up really early and Masses being on early to allow people to get the trains. “For a young fellow, going to Dublin was like going to Hollywood.
“We arrived at the station, and we walked to Dalymount because we had time.
“We were unlucky in those games – and who can forget David Pugh in those days? Ronald Koeman went on to play for Holland and Barcelona and managed those teams too. Ronald Koeman was like a carbon copy of David Pugh. Pugh could head a ball – he was so strong and so competitive.” Sligo Rovers won the League in 1977 and then “Fago” captained Rovers to their first-ever FAI Cup success in 1983.
1977 was a momentous year for Tommie as that was the year he started in journalism.
He had gone to Rathmines to the School of Journalism. He said: “Séamus Finn and Jim and Leo Gray very kindly let me report on the away games for Rovers which was much appreciated and gave me a great start.
“I had been in the same class as Jim and Leo Gray in school.” That was the start – but what was the spark that guided the young Tommie to journalism? He said: “My brother Michael is a better writer than me. He always had good books, magazines and interesting materials and I had that all through my childhood.
“In St John’s in Temple Street I liked doing English essays. I was really lucky in Summerhill with the teachers I had. “Bishop Tom Finnegan had taken over in Summerhill. He was liberal and corporal punishment was gone.
“Mary Kerins was very encouraging. The late Michael McGowan taught me history – he played with Collegians and UCG.
“But the biggest influence was Fr Cyril Haran. At different times in my life I had mentors and he was the first
“The journalist John Healy was the second. Others were Joe Mulholland and Ed Mulhall of RTÉ, as well as John Sorahan from Leitrim, who eventually became the chairman of RTÉ. “Cyril inherited a soccer team in Summerhill that was going to the European Schools Championship in 1973.
“He asked me to be his assistant manager. I was not strong enough or good enough to make the team.
“I helped out. He was my English teacher and he used to write in The Angelus. He had done a journalism course in San Diego and he had a wonderful turn of phrase.
“As well as being my English teacher he was my football friend. We brought teams to France, Glasgow and Liverpool and teams that got to All-Ireland finals with really good players like John Kent, Austin Jennings, Martin Callaghan and Tony McGowan.
“It was Fr Cyril who encouraged me to consider a career in journalism. So, he was the spark.
“I made an absolute mess of the Leaving Cert in 1974.
“There were a few of us who repeated that year.
“There was a programme on the television that time called F Troop, and that was what we called ourselves.
“On the first day we went back in September, rather than go in with slumped shoulders we all dressed up in shirts and ties. It was our response to our plight. “And the next year was much better. I got a decent Leaving Cert the second year.
There were 16 places in the School of Journalism in Rathmines. It was the only journalism course in Ireland. I went there in autumn 1975.
“The course was great fun,
“We’d go on expeditions to the Holy Well. We robbed orchards where the Sligo Park Hotel is. It was a different Sligo and it was a very happy time”
Tommie with Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness and First Minister Peter Robinson before the DUP leader’s final North-South meeting in Armagh in 2015.