A Different View with Dave O’Connell

Good radio is the art of painting pictures for the mind – most of all when it comes to sports broadcasting. And for decades the voices of those iconic commentators brought to life events in places we could only dream on.

Whether it was the All-Ireland Final from Croke Park or the FA Cup Final from Wembley or the Olympic Games from some far-flung part of the planet, we were able to witness these events in our homes and to share the excitement – sometimes with pictures but often just through the wireless at a time when that was a big electrical device that required its own shelf.

Even if you were on a family day out at the beach or, when radios became the standard in cars, driving through glorious Connemara, it was the voice coming over the airwaves that transported you to a different place altogether.

And what voices they were; Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh could make a silent protest seem like a street festival. Perhaps the biggest tribute to his iconic status was that everyone thought they could impersonate him when no one came close to the real thing.

In his passing, those moments of insight and colour were trotted out by all who remembered them better than they’d ever learned their Catechism before making their Confirmation.

His predecessor Micheál O Hehir had a way with words too – not to mention an ability to gloss over an almighty ruckus as ‘handbags’ or at most a schemozzle.

Marty Morrissey is a worthy successor too – another man who can paint pictures with words and come up with the phrase to match the moment. Who will ever forget his reaction when Clare won the Munster Football Final and cows went unmilked for a week?

And it’s funny how each voice becomes the voice of that generation. When O’Hehir retired, it was as though the GAA had lost its identity, and then Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh moved from radio and Irish language commentary to take it to an even higher plane.

Across the water, the BBC had Barry Davies and John Motson as the voices of soccer – not to mention the versatile Peter Jones, who – like our own George Hamilton – brought such gravitas and presence to the Hillsborough Disaster, moving from the excitement of an FA Cup semi-final into the funereal tones as 96, and eventually 97, people died on a day they just went to see a football match.