After years of staid match analysis and predictable magazine programmes, the GAA is finally the subject of an irreverent and innovative show, Park Live. As the All-Ireland football final approaches, host Ger Gilroy talks to Mary Hannigan.
Park Live, RTÉ television's new Sunday morning GAA show, was just two weeks old when, in early August, a viewer's letter arrived. "This level of programming is not good enough," it read. "If you think you are appealing to the GAA populace with such a poor, in parts amateurish and at times embarrassing production, then you are sadly wrong. Why can't GAA viewers be treated to a sanitised, articulate, well-thought-out production?"
It's rare for programme-makers to welcome negative reviews, and even rarer for them to embrace such a slating, but that Park Live was being accused of not being "sanitised" was considered a triumph by those behind the show. That's precisely what they didn't want it to be.
Indeed, if anyone told Ger Gilroy that Park Live, his first foray into television, or his nightly radio programme, NewsTalk 106's Off the Ball, was "sanitised" he would probably pack it all in and look for a new career.
"Some of the criticism we got, so early on, it was incredible," he says. "But, honestly, I was gratified to read some of it. Certain people wouldn't particularly be in our target market. If they liked it we'd really have to worry; we'd have to start again. We have to appeal to a certain section of people, and I really hope we do. If we get that right, then the begrudgers know what they can do."
Park Live is many things, but Up for the Match isn't one of them. And, on the whole, all it has in common with The Sunday Game is its subject matter. It has been most commonly compared with Sky Sports' Soccer AM, the channel's mildly anarchic and sideways look at football, which, like Park Live, is largely aimed at a younger audience.
"I know people are talking about it being almost a carbon copy of Soccer AM, but I would dispute that a little bit. I think it's closer to a hybrid of Soccer AM and [ BBC 1's] Football Focus," says Gilroy. "For example, speaking to Neil Lennon [ the Celtic FC captain] about the death threats he received and showing him his recent sending-off isn't necessarily the kind of thing they'd do on Soccer AM, but they're the kind of things they'd talk about on Football Focus.
"We just try to take people out of their comfort zone a little bit, in terms of the questions we put to them. Really I have the same approach to Park Live as I do to the radio show. I'm keen on asking people questions they haven't been asked before - and on actually hearing them tell the truth about things they might have been asked before.
"Generally I just want everyone to have a good time watching it. We have tried to come up with a format that makes everybody feel comfortable; the biggest ambition for us was to look and feel comfortable talking about GAA on TV."
The "wackier" elements of the show, such as a feature on the worst haircuts in GAA history, probably don't appeal to GAA devotees of a certain vintage, who would prefer their sports to be treated with a little more reverence, but, again, Gilroy says that's not the audience Park Live has in mind. "There is this other market out there, people who are waking up with a hangover on a Sunday morning, who aren't going to Mass but are going to the GAA match that afternoon," he says.
"That's who we are trying to appeal to. It is a particularly vibrant time for the GAA, and with that has come an aspect of celebrity culture, which we've seen happen with other sports. These guys, the players, are on TV quite a lot now, and talking a lot, but I think people have an appetite for even more GAA programming," he says. "They're well served with the amount of live games they get and the coverage of them, but, either side of that, in terms of build-up and analysis, you could do 24 hours of it on the day of the game and people would watch large swathes of it.
"It's great to be part of all that, part of RTÉ's coverage of GAA. We're the little brother in the early morning. That's really what's behind the thinking and developing of this programme."
Before Park Live Gilroy had appeared on television only once, as a guest on David McWilliams's The Big Bite, on RTÉ, but earlier this year Motive Television asked if he would be interested in presenting Park Live with Mairéad Ní Ghormáin.
"I'd never felt 'I'm not going to be fulfilled unless I get a TV show,' but they said they liked the radio programme so they'd like to get me involved in this. It was worth exploring - the only thing you can do is try. We only had about three weeks' notice before we went on air, which was quite frightening, but we've been pleased with how things have gone," he says. "I don't think we're quite finished yet with the way it will develop, but it's been noticeable how we're getting slicker week by week, knowing how long to spend with each guest, that's all part of a learning curve.
"We will sit down at the end of the season with RTÉ and talk about next year, but so far we have had a massive amount of support from Glen Killane [ RTÉ television's head of sport] and Ryle Nugent [ its commissioning editor for sport]. Now we just have to wait and see how the GAA community has reacted to it. So far the feedback from the top of the GAA has been that it's innovative and irreverent, which is what you want to hear people saying, but I'm pretty certain there are people within the GAA community who'll think we are heretics who should be burned at the stake."
Park Live is the successor to the excellent Breaking Ball and the less successful BBX - a show that MTV might have produced if asked to come up with a show to tap into young people's ever-increasing interest in Gaelic games.
The new programme, which is broadcast live from Croke Park, retains much of the energy of BBX but mixes its zanier elements with interviews of substance and originality with GAA's bigger names - Gilroy's strength, as listeners to Off the Ball will attest.
"It would be terrible if GAA players went down the cliched road of footballers - 'Obviously, at the end of the day it's going to be a difficult game, there are no easy games in the championship any more . . .' and all that," he says. "But, by and large, that hasn't happened. The people we've had on the show have had something interesting to say, they have lives outside their sport, so thankfully we haven't had too many cliches. But we also try to look at the funnier elements of GAA. There's no shortage of material, but it's really never been used before in the way that we try to use it. Of course some people don't enjoy that aspect of the show - they feel there should almost be a reverential approach to dealing with GAA - but we see no harm in having some fun with it. And we'd like to think the people watching enjoy it."
The 28-year-old has been presenting Off the Ball, which is Ireland's only nightly sports show, for three years - despite having been that he didn't have a voice for radio by a former employer at FM104, where he began to work while he was studying English at Trinity College, in Dublin. (He was also sports editor of the college paper.)
After Trinity he had stints with Setanta.com and TradeSports.com, a "sports trading and betting" site, before the journalist and broadcaster Daire O'Brien gave him his break on Off the Ball. What began as a two-hour show was extended to three hours after a year.
Gilroy is from a family steeped in GAA. His father, Gerry, played hurling for Antrim and later coached the county's minor team; his mother, Eileen McGrogan, was on the Antrim team that won the All-Ireland camogie final in 1967. He, though, was born in Athy, in Co Kildare. And for a man with a passion for Gaelic football, being born in the county has given him more dark days than he'd choose to remember. If Park Live keeps going, will he ever get to interview a Kildare All-Ireland-winning captain? "Only if we exhume one."
Park Live is on RTÉ 1 every Sunday at 10.30am. Off the Ball is on NewsTalk 106 from Monday to Friday, 7pm