In the summer of 1990 Eamon Dunphy chucked a pen across a television studio and half of Ireland lost its mind. The incident occurred during RTÉ's coverage of Ireland’s stultifying nil-nil draw with Egypt at the World Cup in Italy, when, in the middle of a tirade against Jack Charlton’s “put ‘em under pressure” tactics, the pugilistic pundit let fly.
In the days that followed, the outburst generated as many headlines as the game itself, and for years afterwards supporters of the boys in green would see red at the mention of Dunphy’s name. Still, in hindsight he feels he got off lightly. Were “pen-gate” to happen today he doubts he would have much of a career left once the dust settled. “Social media would have finished me...I would have been a dead man walking,” he says.
But the controversy didn’t finish him, and, having just turned 79, Dunphy remains a figure of note in Irish broadcasting. Launched in 2016, his podcast The Stand has a large and devoted audience and offers a forum for Dunphy to explore subjects such as Gaza, the RTÉ pay controversy in the wake of the organisation’s under-declaration of payments to Ryan Tubridy and the race for the White House.
The Stand is sober, serious listening with none of the smoke-belching that was a feature of Dunphy’s journalism in the 1980s and 1990s. But he nonetheless draws a direct line from his time as the bad boy of Irish broadcasting to his work as a podcaster. If Dunphy’s pen-flinging days are long behind, he still sees it as his duty to hold to account members of what he continues to call “official Ireland” – certain public figures he feels the media is reluctant to portray in a negative light.
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One example he offers is President Michael D Higgins, who has been criticised in some quarters for sending a letter of congratulations to the new president of Iran.
“I feel official Ireland, which is a phrase that I coined to describe it, it still exists. It’s just different people at the top. There’s the President at the moment. You can’t say a word against Michael D, of course. You couldn’t say a word against Mary Robinson. You couldn’t say a word against John Hume. All that ‘couldn’t say a word’ stuff is bad and dangerous for journalism.”
He feels Higgins has brought too much of his own politics to the Áras. “He needs to be seen to be neutral. He can’t be dabbling in politics. We know he’s left-wing. Mary Robinson, we knew what she was [ie from the political left]. The president should be seen but not heard. That’s what the Constitution believes. If you want to be an active politician go into politics.”
Dunphy is good company on a Zoom chat from his home in Ranelagh, Dublin, where he lives with his partner, Jane Gogan. It quickly becomes clear that the cantankerous figure he sometimes cut as part of the RTÉ soccer panel, opposite the late Bill O’Herlihy and his great friend John Giles, was just one aspect of his personality. The same could be said of the attack dog who prowled the pages of the Sunday Independent when it was one of the most powerful bully pulpits in Irish public life.
At the Sindo, Dunphy was one of a number of journalists who criticised John Hume for holding talks with the Provisional IRA during some of the bloodiest years of the Troubles. A consensus has since formed that those who lambasted Hume were on the wrong side of history. But at the time feelings about the Provisionals ran strong, and Dunphy, far from writing in a vacuum, was articulating the revulsion many felt about the IRA and the atrocities it committed in the misguided, if not deranged, belief that a million-plus unionists could be bombed into a united Ireland.
“There was a young lad killed in Warrington,” says Dunphy, referring to the 1993 bombing in which three-year-old Jonathan Ball and 12-year-old Tim Parry were murdered in an IRA attack.
“It was a bomb that exploded outside a McDonald’s in Warrington. And, at the same time, there were people here, and John Hume was one of them who – this is very important point – who were in negotiation with Gerry Adams and the IRA to get a ceasefire. Getting that ceasefire and negotiating for it was very, very important. There was an argument to say, before you negotiated with the IRA you should ask them to put their guns down – or not to commit an atrocity … If you were a normal person and you saw a child murdered, and the people who did it then going and speaking with someone like John Hume … I think it raises questions.”
He later met Hume, who Dunphy claims did not hold his views against him. “He was fine with me. He understood. Sometimes you have to allow opinions to be aired.”
Having worked for many decades at RTÉ as a pundit, he was not shocked when the controversy over RTÉ's secret payments to Tubridy plunged the organisation into crisis last year. He adds that anger towards any particular broadcaster is misdirected, and that the buck should ultimately stop with the executives. “I wasn’t surprised. I know the character of the people in there. I know the way that bureaucracy works...It’s a shocking scandal. It really is. The people are angry. That’s why they don’t pay their licence.”
He feels Tubridy was a scapegoat, and that the issues around RTÉ go beyond any one presenter. “They called it the Tubridy scandal. He wasn’t the cause of it. He was a symptom of it. Under-the-counter payments was all part of the way it worked. The management in there and the people who are [at] the top…the money they are earning. You have to ask what are they doing to earn that money. At least Joe Duffy is working five days a week.
“People outside RTÉ, whether it’s a newspaper or another broadcaster in the commercial sector, will feel very aggrieved at the free money they get and how they waste it. In terms of podcasts they’re flying podcasts out the window. We have to compete with that. We have in the middle of our broadcasting culture this vast greedy monolith that is unwilling to be answerable to anyone.”
Days before our conversation news breaks of plans to make a movie about the rift between Roy Keane and Mick McCarthy in the run-up to the 2002 World Cup. Dunphy was close to the player and ghost-authored Keane: The Autobiography, published several months after the blow-up at Ireland’s training centre on Saipan. While he wonders about the international appeal of a film telling such a specifically Irish story, his memories of that time are nonetheless vivid.
“I was writing the Keane book. Liam Brady and John Giles, who were two good friends of mine, they felt I was taking Keane’s side because of writing the book. Which is a reasonable assumption. They thought Keane was in the wrong. Maybe he was but for me the bottom line was that Mick McCarthy was the manager. And managers are responsible for managing. There was a situation that Keane presented…They never liked each other. Even when they were playing.”
Keane tended to not get along with his managers at international level. “Keane didn’t like Mick and Mick didn’t like Keane. Keane didn’t like Jack. And Jack, he tolerated Roy. He was a young player then. You could argue Keane should have stayed – he probably should – but you can also argue with equal reason that Mick should have managed the situation better. He [Keane] got us there. He was one of the best players in the world. We were shooting ourselves in the head. I’ve spoken to Mick about it subsequently and he says, it’s got to be my way or the highway. I would say if Keane had stayed we could easily have got to the semi-finals.”
Since retiring as a player Keane has reinvented himself as a sort of cuddly grump on ITV and Sky. What does Dunphy think of his transformation?
“He’s become a professional controversialist, which is something people used to accuse me of – which wasn’t in any way true. As an analyst in football he’s box office. Sky love him and ITV love him. Because he gets bums on seats. He’s not afraid to call it. He’s not afraid of naming big names and saying they should be this or that. He asked me to write his book and I wrote it. At the time he was playing for Manchester United, which inhibited him. Roddy Doyle was able to do it after he finished playing and did a better book [2014′s The Second Half] because Keane was less constrained in what he could say. I said I’d do it because I admired him and it was a good book to write at the time.”
Keane is a “decent” guy but Dunphy argues he has one major flaw. “He’s got five lovely children, a very nice wife, a nice home. He was very good to his family when he was earning big money. He is notably involved in a guide dog charity. He has one fault and it’s intolerance: he’s an intolerant man. Tolerance and forgiveness are things he probably won’t acquire at this stage.”
The Stand is on a reduced schedule for the summer but Dunphy is looking forward to getting back into the thick of it over the coming months. Knocking on his 80s, he feels in decent fettle and has no plans to retire.
“I like doing my work and I like doing it as well as I can. Why a podcast? I thought I’d try it when I left RTÉ. I didn’t like to think of myself sitting in the house doing nothing, playing golf and other stuff like that. I like to work. Thank God I have my health and I can work.
“The podcast has worked out very well for us. We have an audience. It’s a very good audience and we can sell our ads. And we’re very happy. God’s been good enough to let me live to this age. To be sitting around all day doing nothing wouldn’t be right. Many, many people hate the work they do. They can’t wait to get out when they’re 65. I’m lucky that I’m not like that. I love the work that I do and I want to go on doing it.”
The Stand can be listened to via all podcast services.
