Matt Cooper: Anchoring TV3's Rugby World Cup coverage
TV3 has had rotten luck with Irish internationals. It seems as if every time the network shows a live Ireland soccer game, the team loses. After our 5-2 defeat to Cyprus there was even talk of a TV3 curse. The station is looking to the Rugby World Cup to change all that, and its anchor, the Today FM presenter Matt Cooper, knows they need to match RTÉ's professionalism and compete with the avuncular charms of Tom McGurk, George Hook and Brent Pope.
"I hope that people will be pleasantly surprised," he says. "I'm not anxious about it, because it's the same challenge I faced when I started The Last Word on Today FM. We set ourselves the goal of beating RTÉ in the drivetime slot, and we achieved that. Commercial broadcasters can do things as well as or better than RTÉ when they set their minds to it."
Cooper, who is from Cork, played rugby with Sunday's Well. "I was far too slow to be anywhere near top level, but I enjoyed the game enormously. I won't be the fool sitting there knowing nothing about rugby, and I hope I will bring to it the enthusiasm of the genuine fan. My late father was a selector for the Munster juniors, and his claim to fame was that he dropped Richard Harris from the team."
Cooper will be joined by Paul Wallace, Trevor Brennan, Jim Glennon, Michael Cheika, Jim Williams and Victor Costello; the commentary team is Conor McNamara and the former Irish international Philip Matthews.
Bill O'Herlihy first put the idea of sports presenting into Cooper's head. "I met him at the All-Ireland Hurling Final in 1999 and he said: 'You should think about it. You know sport, you love sport, so why not?' When the opportunity came up I jumped at it."
So how does he rate our chances? "The build-up hasn't been great, but I've met a lot of the players in the last few months, and they are so focused it's like 30 Roy Keanes. I think this is a different team now. It's no longer the give-it-a-lash mentality of old. They believe in themselves." Michael Kelly. Photograph: David Sleator
Coverage of Ireland's opening game, against Namibia, starts on TV3 at 6pm tomorrow