Articles by Kieran Cunningham

Technology

Time for this accidental sports journalist to fall into another phase of life

It started on the first Monday of 1998. Stepping into an office in Terenure for the first time while wearing a black velvet suit bought for 60 punts in the Dunne's Store sale. Start as you mean to go wrong. A job had come up in The Star and, despite dubious fashion tastes, I got the nod. During the 1990s up to then, I'd worked as a teacher in Italy, as a barman in Dublin, gone back to college to do a Masters in film which was quickly abandoned, and had spells as a journalist with a radio station in Dublin, three newspapers in London and one in Cork. So I was moving around regularly, or couldn't settle - take your pick. Thought it would be the same in The Star, so how did I end up as the longest serving member of staff? Maybe I got institutionalised somewhere along the way. Whatever. This is my last piece, written on my last day. Why am I going? To borrow a book title of a man from my home parish of Gleann Cholm Cille, it's partly due to rotha mór an tsaoil. I had open heart surgery in 2023 and stage four cancer this year. That sharpens the focus and the mind. There are things I want to do, and that means leaving the comfort zone behind. There's a way to do these kind of pieces. Detail the number of Olympic Games and World Cups and All-Ireland finals and Six Nations and world title fights covered, and all that jazz...and talk of how it was a blessing and a privilege. Maybe throw in a photograph of lanyards and accreditation passes to add to the humblebrag (a word that wasn't invented until I was in this job for 12 years). I have a confession to make, I don't think it was a privilege. I don't really feel I was lucky. Don't want to go all Roy Keane on it but it was the job. If I didn't cover an Olympics well, I wouldn't be going to the next one. Someone else would get the gig. That's the way things operate - or how they should operate, anyway. Here's the thing: I never had to qualify to go to an Olympics. No journalist had to do so. There aren't A and B qualifying standards of typing speed. As for the lanyards etc, I have the match ticket from the 2005 Champions League final - because there will never be a game like that again - and that's it. I am not a hoarder. I love sentimentality in country music, but nowhere else. Of course, it was a buzz to be there to watch Sonia O'Sullivan dash to Olympic silver in Sydney or to witness Katie Taylor's ear-bleeding victory at London 2012 or to see the unlikely lad Jason McAteer sinking the Dutch or to be up close and personal during the year of the Saipan bother or to feel the stands shake when Kevin McManamon rattled the Kerry net in 2011 or to gaze on in wonder when Shane O'Donnell's smile transformed the hurling world. But doing the job right was what mattered. Trying to find the words to do all of the above justice. That was the job. Usually, I failed. That's the reality that comes with the pressure of daily journalism. Going back over old pieces is a painful exercise. For the first decade, at least, I veered between poor and mediocre, for the most part. Day after day after day. Things have improved a bit in recent years but, even if chippers no longer wrap a one and one in old newspaper, what we do is still as ephemeral and flimsy and transient. If there were five pieces in a year I was happy with, that was a great year. That is not a lie. Adrenaline and being under the cosh did help. So many of us curse deadlines but struggle to write a sentence without the pressure of one. When big stories come along, the pressure is greater and that often gets the best out of you. It wasn't just about glory days. There was as big a buzz in chasing the stories in Irish sport when things went badly wrong - like the omnishambles of the double whammy of Pat Hickey and the Irish boxers in Rio, like the house of cards built by John Delaney, like Daniel Kinahan's takeover of professional boxing, like trying to show the real face of Conor McGregor. I know some will reach for that Simpsons meme of 'old man shakes fist at cloud' but there have been a lot of changes for the worse in sports journalism. It's now common on air, in print, and online for reporters to use 'we' when talking of Ireland teams. The few greybeards that are still around who were reared in the sean-nós cringe at this - there should always be a distance between us and them, and national teams should be a 'them' too. The narrowing of focus in sports media is a major issue too. Even in a much bigger market like the UK, specialist correspondents have been laid off for years. In Ireland, GAA, soccer, rugby, horseracing and golf dominate the sports pages, but even the latter pair are feeling the squeeze. The coverage of sports like athletics and boxing - which have a long and proud history here and are full of stories - has been squeezed. But we should study closely what has happened to, say, the boxing media. Fan sites and YouTubers have been cultivated and are given ringside seats because they dutifully cheerlead and repeat whatever nonsense is fed to them. Experienced and competent reporters have been either refused accreditation or seated in the Gods as punishment for asking relevant questions. Rather than seeing that as a salutary lesson in how not to operate, the real fear is that there are other sports who will look to follow what boxing has done. The sports media doesn't reflect the changing Ireland, either. In 1998, there was one female sports editor. In 2025, there is still just one. There are as many women working as sports reporters in newspapers now as 28 years ago. Here's a secret, it's not very many. Where are the sports reporters from different cultural backgrounds? Irish sport is full of star performers from migrant families, but that change isn't reflected in the media. Also, where are the mavericks? Paul Kimmage started out as a plumber, Eamon Carr was the drummer in a rock 'n' roll band. Journalism needs cranks and eccentrics. We should be wary of going on about an interviewee being 'honest' too. Honesty is always selective. My experience with Ryan Giggs taught me that. Somehow, I got a one-on-one interview with him in 2008 in Manchester the week before Manchester United's Champions League final with Chelsea. When I came back, I was talking up his honesty to all and sundry. Subsequent events made it clear that I was being played. I was far from alone. Truth to tell, I was always an accidental sports journalist, falling into the trade by accident. People are what interest me most and I got to meet so many great and fascinating ones. There were many memorable nights out with Eamon Dunphy that blurred into one, but there is photographic evidence of us strong-arming Tom Jones into a sing-song. Somehow, along the way, I managed to have a row with the nicest man in Irish sport, Sean Boylan. A few months into the job, I asked Stuart Carolan - later to write Love/Hate - to pen a column in the guise of his comic character 'Navan Man', previewing a Meath/Offaly Leinster Championship quarter-final. The piece wasn't overly kind to our Offaly brethren... Boylan got hold of my number and ripped me to shreds. I remember him bellowing 'are you a man of honour?' and I spent the rest of that day questioning my life choices. Things improved from there, though I did get punched in the mixed zone after the 2005 Champions League final while standing in front of a bemused Jamie Carragher with his medal around his neck. And a former Ireland assistant manager once tapped me on the shoulder to inform me that I am a REDACTED. Who knows what's next? I certainly couldn't have predicted what was coming over the past few years. I'll finish with the words of a former teacher, the late Brendan Kennelly. ''Though we live in a world that dreams of ending that always seems about to give in Something that will not acknowledge conclusion insists that we forever begin.