Straight Talking Man - Joe Brolly Interview

Over the past ten years, Joe Brolly’s appearances as a football analyst on The Sunday Game’s live coverage and its evening highlights show have seen him come to rival Eamon Dunphy as Ireland’s most controversial sports pundit. Indeed, a championship summer would now seem incomplete without the 45-year-old Derryman landing at the centre of at least one major storm.

It'd probably be quicker to list the counties Brolly hasn’t offended: comments made concerning tactical fouling ahead of the 2012 All Ireland final led to him being dubbed “the Salman Rushdie of County Mayo”. Brolly’s most famous moment occurred after the 2013 All Ireland quarter final between Tyrone and Monaghan, when he embarked on a furious two-minute rant about a cynical last gasp foul by Tyrone’s Sean Cavanagh on Conor McManus, a compelling piece of theatrical punditry which to date has amassed in excess of 250,000 views on YouTube.

More recently, Brolly sparked controversy with a tweet about Sky Sports presenter Rachel Wyse (‘SKY = TV3 plus Baywatch babe’), for which he subsequently apologised. However, the public came to see a different side of the outspoken pundit when, in 2012, he donated a kidney to a clubmate of his at St. Brigid’s in Belfast, 42-year-old Aiken PR executive Shane Finnegan. Though the transplant failed, Shane Finnegan remains in good health thanks to ongoing dialysis treatment.

Brolly himself has become an advocate for reform of the organ donation system in the south, pushing the issue firmly onto the government’s agenda. His kidney donation to Finnegan and his campaigning were the subject of a terrific RTÉ documentary at the end of 2013.

On the afternoon we meet, Brolly is at the centre of another controversy. Social media and sports sites are abuzz about a heated debate between presenter Des Cahill and Brolly on RTÉ radio the previous evening, when Joe suggested Cahill was making too much of the Donegal team doctor being pushed over during a melee in their All Ireland quarter final clash with Armagh.

In person, Brolly betrays little of the abrasiveness – and occasional arrogance – of his broadcasting persona. A Belfast-based barrister and the son of two Sinn Féin councillors (he insists he has never voted for the party), he is articulate and sharp, but friendlier than you might expect. Having served as a dynamic corner forward on a fine Derry side which won the All Ireland in 1993, he retains an obvious love of the GAA, but is critical of what he sees as an increasingly crass embrace of commercialism by the association...

PAUL NOLAN: Yourself and Des Cahill had a heated exchange yesterday about the Donegal doctor getting pushed over during the game.
JOE BROLLY: One of the features of political correctness is unnecessary moral outrage. The Donegal doctor, who was a footballer himself, ran 80 yards up the pitch to get involved in a pushing and pulling match that was none of his business. In the course of it, he was pushed over. As I said, it wasn’t exactly Florence Nightingale being captured by enemy troops. And you could contrast that with RTÉ’s handling of Gaza – the failure to criticise the Israelis over blatant human rights atrocities. The small guy is getting the shit kicked out of him by the big guy, who can do what he wants. So there’s all that political correctness and hypocrisy...

We’ve got the semi-final most people want – Donegal’s blanket defence versus Dublin’s all-out attack. Are Donegal are the only team left who can beat Dublin?
Well, strictly speaking Mayo are the team best equipped to beat them. They have power all over the pitch and an excellent half-back line, which dominated Dublin’s half-forward line in last year’s final. Don’t forget Mayo lost that game by a point. They were 5-1 up after 20 minutes, in total control. Mayo’s Achilles heel is giving away ridiculous goals. That was their undoing in the 2012 final against Donegal. It’s mystifying to me how they can’t defend their goals. The first goal they conceded against Dublin last year was laughable – a high ball kicked in and Bernard Brogan flicked it into the net. Against Donegal, Bernard Brogan would have been double-marked and Paul Durcan would have taken his head off.

You felt that Dublin just about hung on in last year’s final.
Dublin were clinging on at the final whistle. They resorted to systematic tactical fouling in the last 10 minutes to preserve their lead. Mayo are a very formidable force and are very close, but it’s this defensive issue that’s preventing them from winning the All Ireland.

Mayo’s manager, James Horan, was very critical of you when you said Mayo had indulged in tactical fouling in their 2012 semi-final against Dublin.
In that game, Mayo treated the Dubs like Huskie dogs, they just dragged them down all over the field. Twenty-eight tactical fouls I counted in the match. That’s what won the game. It was so audacious. And, of course, that game was a huge boost for the black card movement. James was very upset because I identified it the week of the All Ireland final. And I still never got a ‘thank you’ card from Jim McGuinness for that!

People who are critical of your analysis say that was another example of your bias towards Ulster teams.
I have no bias towards Ulster teams. I’m biased towards Derry. I love Derry and my heart’s with them whenever I’m at a match. Sadly, we don’t have that many days out (laughs). Aside from that, anyone who thinks I’m biased towards Ulster teams, just look at my calling out of Mickey Harte and Tyrone about tactical fouling. Dragging down opponents was really disfiguring the game. I mean, the Sean Cavanagh rant has passed into legend wherever Irish people gather in any far-flung corner of the world! Everyone was pussyfooting around it. Everybody’s afraid of Mickey Harte and nobody wanted to say it. There was a hugely positive response and again it put wind in the sails of the black card movement.

You think people are afraid of Mickey Harte?
People are afraid of Mickey. I mean, obviously Mickey’s had a very traumatic time, he’s a public figure, a difficult man. He has a very strong sense of self – look at his handling of RTE. He’s obviously had a very sorrowful element that’s come into his life that will never go away. People are afraid to criticise: it’s an understandable human thing. But he shouldn’t be treated differently to anybody else: it’s only Gaelic football. It’s supposed to be fun and enjoyment... I can’t listen to that stuff about, “I’ve never instructed my teams to play that way.” I mean, he’s never told them not to play that way. Even their minor and U21 teams were doing it.

I thought his book was really good.
Really? I’m surprised. Mickey will present the world according to the very narrow way that Mickey sees the world.

He was talking about the 'sledging' that Tyrone indulged in, saying it was okay because it was preferable to a punch in the head.
I would differ. When I was playing, that sort of thing would have been met with fist-fighting. And there’s an honesty and an openness about fist-fighting. The sort of stuff that they began, the diving, the feigning injury, getting countless opponents sent off – they became specialists at that. Peter Canavan was one of the main culprits. Peter’s a brilliant footballer, in my view the greatest footballer of his era. I'd rate him above Colm Cooper for example – and that’s saying something. Colm is maybe slightly more perfect in his skillset, but Canavan was the warrior-general. If there’s a problem, bring Canavan on and he’ll solve it. The greatest player I’ve seen in the modern era. And yet there is that other side.

Sledging is one of the most unpleasant aspects of the modern game.
I’m not sure how bad it is. I know what Oisín McConville said about the Tyrone defence, it was chronic. “Here’s a pregnancy test for your mother” – that type of thing. (Laughs). I’m not sure he actually said that. There’s no doubt it’s unsavoury and creates poisonous relationships. Once you could batter hell out of each other. You’d still go for a drink afterwards. And it’s another layer of hypocrisy, because them boys have to pretend to be getting on. When in fact, in private, they’d be saying, “I hate his guts”. So it has damaged something that’s alive and well in rugby – that sense of camaraderie.

What do you think of Ulster football currently? It’s very defensive.
Jimmy McGuinness in Donegal is probably the most extraordinary phenomenon I have seen in sport. You had this bedraggled group, who within six or seven months of his arrival were Ulster champions, and sterling Ulster champions. They were romping through teams. It’s the most extraordinary coup in modern Irish sport. Of course, what it has done is set a putrid example. People think: “This works, we can do that.” You saw what happened in 2012, when Donegal won the All Ireland – teams actually played really well against Donegal, but they couldn’t beat them. Cork played brilliantly against them, and at half-time they’re behind, saying, “What the fuck?” It’s just the ruthless appliance of logic, what Jose Mourinho does with Chelsea. After Chelsea were beaten by Sunderland this year in the Capital One Cup, Mourinho said, “Look, we’ve been experimenting with expansive, imaginative football. The experiment is over.”

The flipside is the attacking game employed by Dublin, who are enjoying a golden age.
The huge turning point for the Dubs was the arrival of Pat Gilroy. Paul Caffrey had tried to play football, but it was a rollercoaster, and they couldn’t get scores when they needed to. They didn’t understand how to control the tempo. Pat Gilroy came in and thought he could continue that with a few amendments. They had the “startled earwigs” episode against Kerry where they were just blown away, and that was the big change. I was in Trinity with Pat and he played on the Dublin team we beat when we won the All Ireland in 1993, so I know him well. I met him for a drink in Kavanagh’s bar after that Kerry game. I said, “Jesus, you boys are going to be winning O’Byrne Cups from now until Kingdom Come unless you introduce a sweeper system.” And when they came back the following season, it was very defensive. Teams couldn’t score against them. That got some consistency, which gave them confidence. And then they put Tyrone to the sword in Croke Park, a huge thing psychologically given the fucking serial humiliations Tyrone had subjected them to. And then they won the All Ireland.

They’re reaping the rewards now of a lot of work at underage level.
They are, but more important is Jim Gavin’s absolute conviction that what he’s doing is right.

It’s not more important than weight of numbers – the sheer amount of quality footballers is phenomenal.
Fine, but you could easily see how Paul Caffrey could come with this group of players and they wouldn’t do anything. The leader has got to be right. Make no mistake, Jim Gavin is a most sophisticated leader. I remember during the Dublin-Kerry match last year, Kerry were absolutely filleting them in the first 20 minutes. Gavin was sitting serenely on the subs bench. I wrote at the time, “He was like a man in Kent, sitting on his back lawn on a sunny day, sipping a glass of Pimms.”

Given their incredible strength in depth, is it inevitable that Dublin will be split in two?
I don’t think there’s necessarily any emergency yet. There aren’t any other truly great teams around right now. But here’s the bigger picture. The essence of the GAA is participation, and in 2002 they had a strategic review. It was a brilliant document, it runs to a couple of hundred pages. And they recommended then – and this was when Dublin weren’t dominant – that Dublin needed to be broken up into at least two blocks. At the time, it was too revolutionary and radical for everybody. The guys involved foresaw this – Peter Quinn and Sean McCague were serious dudes. They were visionaries, the sort we’re crying out for in the GAA to bring us back to what we’re supposed to be, a cultural and social organisation. Not a commercial organisation that as a byline involves itself in social and cultural Ireland. In any event, they foresaw what’s happening now.

But there was a different logic behind it.
The ideological reasoning behind it was absolutely sound. The GAA is about participation. So with two Dublin teams, a south and a north, and two squads at all levels, there are greater opportunities. Of course as a by-product it would create a more even playing field. That was an ideological assessment. Look at the sheer numbers in Dublin now. There aren’t enough opportunities for young Gaelic footballers and hurlers. It makes perfect sense. It’s going to hurt in the short term, but it’s inevitable.

One of the biggest controversies this summer was Armagh’s media ban. I wasn’t that impressed with their ex-manager, Paul Grimley – who described you as “a bully”.
He’s a silly sort of a fella. He’s one of those carpetbaggers – he gets jobs all around the country. As for him saying I’m a bully, I don’t know about that. He’s a lot bigger than me! I’m just talking about Gaelic football. I don’t know much about him. He eventually took the Armagh job, in my estimation, because he really had no choice at that stage. It looked as if he would have preferred to be the assistant. What was he doing bringing in other managers, like Peter McDonnell and Kieran McGeeney. Those were crutches if you like. In my estimation, there’s no way that Paul Grimley came up with the defensive strategy. I’m not sure that McGeeney did either. He was with Kildare six years, and nothing was done to stem the tidal wave of goals against them. Really, the most conspicuous thing about the whole project was that they were cannon fodder and decided to go with the two sweepers. It was like, “If we can’t beat them, we’ll join them”. That’s the big message that comes out of it. Paul as a visionary, or a manager of substance? No. I don’t buy it. I’m only talking about Gaelic football, I don’t know anything about Paul outside Gaelic football. I just think he’s a useless manager. And I don’t mind saying that.

Following the announcement of the GAA’s Sky Sports deal earlier this year, you apologised for tweeting ‘SKY = TV3 plus Baywatch babe’, in reference to presenter Rachel Wyse.
I wasn’t saying she was a Baywatch babe. That’s Sky’s formula. Typically it’s for young men – and they use that American template. No matter how talented a woman is, she’s not going to be on Sky unless she’s a babe. I was trying to focus the debate on the whole Sky thing. I was visiting patients in Beaumont yesterday morning. A young fella from Kerry – called Mikey Sheehy, would you believe! – has given a kidney to his nephew. Both are doing very well. He was wearing his Kerry jersey yesterday for me coming, ’cos I was going to give a wee talk and stuff. And then Dr Dave Hickey, the Dublin team doctor, took me on a tour of the wards, and in one there were about five lads, long-term patients, wearing their Dublin jerseys. I spent a couple of hours there: obviously I’m absolutely set on this path to make sure that all of the relevant changes are made. People are dying unnecessarily in Ireland. I did a deal with the Taoiseach last year, and we’ve now got 19 full-time organ donation personnel in the south, fully funded, and a proper national transplant office. And a brilliant team, people like Professor Jim Egan and Dave Hickey.

Get to the point, Brolly!
Anyway, yesterday in Beaumont, all the patients said to me, “Terrible shame we can’t see the games.” There are 10,000 patients in Irish hospitals. None could watch the All Ireland football quarter finals, ’cos obviously hospitals don’t have the money to spring for Sky Sports.

And you said this yesterday on radio.
The top brass have been keen for me not to talk about these things, but what do you do? I’m a GAA man first and foremost, have always believed passionately in the GAA and the fact that we’re a community organisation. You think of the fact that 10,000 people in Irish hospitals couldn’t see the games – our games. We’ve always been able to pay our bills – Croke Park’s paid off long ago – and yet we’re making these overtly commercial deals.

You're very critical of the GAA hierarchy, then?
Liam O’Neill, Paraic Duffy and the GAA generally have been brilliant in helping out with the organ donation campaign. I would bring Liam O’Neill and those boys in and take them around those wards, and show them all the people wearing GAA jerseys. And I appreciate that’s emotive, but that’s the reality of it. I don’t care who covers the games – good luck to Sky, I had no issue with TV3. The fact is you’ve got one-fifteenth of the audience that was available – think of the message that sends out. I’m disappointed. I've made those feelings clear to the GAA hierarchy. I don’t give a fuck about RTÉ. I like the fact it’s a national broadcaster. However, I’m freelance. In the end, this is a very important issue.

The RTÉ documentary last year about your kidney donation was excellent. How is Shane Finnegan doing now?
He’s doing surprisingly well. Obviously, if he’s not on dialysis, he’d be dead in five days. So he has dialysis every other day. He’s got a new form of treatment, nocturnal dialysis, and he’s doing much better on that. He’s as well as he can possibly be. Obviously, there are hugely increased risks for him. And your health deteriorates. When you get diagnosed with end-stage kidney failure, for example, it’s the same as being diagnosed with an aggressive cancer, your prognosis is about three years. You need to get off dialysis as quickly as you can and get a transplant. Shane’s been on dialysis for seven years now. He’s very healthy all around. We’re going to have to face it... sooner or later. That’s the problem if it fails – your lives are inextricably intertwined.

Is the goal for your campaign to get legislation in place for an “opt-out” system?
Those words are confusing. The big thing is to get the infrastructure in place, and that’s happened. It’s vital we get the transplant hospital. The HSE is starting to come around to that way of thinking. After that, the idea is to go for legislation – ’cos there is no legislation in the south, just voluntary arrangements. I want a public conversation going. Get RTÉ involved, get Newstalk involved, get on The Late Late Show. Once you start talking about legislation, it involves everybody. So few people know about the important thing, which is the infrastructure – that was just a deal we did in private. So we have the 19 full-time organ donation personnel now. We’ve got E3 million a year to fund the national transplant office.

The whole point about the legislation that we proposed, and that the government is going to enact – this is going to happen – is that it’s a family consent bill. Basically it would say, “Organ donation will proceed only with the consent of the family.” You won’t need organ donor cards or anything. The problem with the current system is simple: in the North you’ve an organ donor register online; in the south you’ve got organ donor cards, a voluntary system run by the Irish Kidney Association. You get an organ donor card, you think, ‘That’s it, job done. I’ll keep it in my pocket and if anything happens, god forbid, my organs will be taken'.

That’s not how it works?
No. In the North, people say, ‘I’ll go on the organ donor register online, and that’s me'. If something happens to them, god forbid, their organs will never be taken, because doctors will not take the organs without family consent. The problem with the current system is that it sends out mixed messages. You get an organ donor card, and you think you don’t need to have a conversation with your family. So there’s huge confusion.

What do we need to do?
You can’t say to a mother who’s grieving, 'Look, we’re taking your son’s organs, he’s got an organ donor card'. There'd be fucking mayhem. Doctors aren’t going to do that: they want someone there to sign this detailed consent form. So what we want to do is bring the law into line with reality, and say right, it can’t proceed without detailed family consent. That protects the rights of children, protects the rights of the disabled, protects the rights of the family if they want to change their mind. What’s been happening in the last two years, is that families are saying to the doctors, 'If it comes to the worst, we want to donate'. Because it’s out there now, people are talking about it – it’s on the radio and the TV and it’s in the papers. People are saying it’s a beautiful thing and it’s unthreatening. All the legislation will do is copper fasten that.

You’ve a good story about it.
I have a very close friend called Stephen Devlin, a true high flier – first class in Queen’s, successful in the city of London, all of that. No children, mid-40s, lives with his partner who’s an artist. And he decided he wanted to do something. He came to see me in Guy’s Hospital in London, and he was moved by everything that he saw in the transplant unit. People being brought back to life. And as luck would have it, about six months later, his mum’s kidneys failed. Two weeks ago he gave her a kidney. She’s 77, the oldest person to be transplanted. She’s flying now. I went to see her before I came down to Croke Park for the Dublin quarter final. She’s planning to go back playing tennis now. I said to Stephen at the time, 'God, she’s very old to be giving her a kidney'. And he said, 'She gave me life, I’m going to give her life'. That’s a perfect thing. And that’ll have a massive implication for Stephen’s life, his spirituality will deepen. Life will never be the same.

This is what happened to me. I always use to ask myself, 'What’s the point of life?' I don’t ask myself that question anymore, because I get it now.