EAMON DUNPHY WANTS to talk about football.
A lot.
And his pre- and post-game slots on RTÉ television just aren’t sating his appetite.
“It’s very hard in soccer to find good, intelligent analysis,” he told TheJournal.ie in a recent interview.
“So there isn’t anything that I listen to where I feel comfortable saying ‘this is an intelligent, interesting perspective’.
A lot of it is very tabloidy. The English television channels, to be fair, don’t really make an effort. When you look at the people they have, they’re on because they were great players. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to be a good analyst.
“So, there isn’t much that I watch. Sometimes I turn the sound down.”
Taking the matter into his own hands, Dunphy has decided to launch his own show – in the form of a football podcast.
The programme will launch on 21 November with a live audience at Trinity College. The pundit has gathered the old gang together and on stage with him will be John Giles, Liam Brady and Didi Hamann.
He plans for other people to get on board over the coming months, including experts in other sports including horse racing and GAA.
“I hope it will be an intelligent, funny, irreverent, candid look at sport. That will be the aim,” he says.
The show will go online twice a week – on Mondays and Fridays – and will be up to one hour long.
“I’m very excited about it because I love radio… the happiest time I’ve ever spent as a journalist was doing The Last Word on TodayFM,” Dunphy admits.
“I loved it. It’s a great medium and this is a great chance to talk at more length… When you’re on television doing the Champions League, you’re sort of constrained with time. If you have someone like Didi, or Liam, or John, you want to hear what they’ve to say, you want to hear the discussion run its course rather than squeezing everything in.”
He believes he’s hitting the market at the right time as the Premier League is particularly exciting at the moment – even though he cites the recent Liverpool Manchester United Monday night dud which petered out at Anfield after days of hype (in front of billions of viewers worldwide).
“I was looking forward to it all day, and my son is a Liverpool supporter, all weekend we were talking about it,” he says.
It brings popular culture and a richness into people’s lives and because it means so much to people, it deserves to be critiqued seriously and talked about intelligently and not going for soundbites.
On the road with Dunphy and pals
As well as the podcast, Dunphy and co. are hitting the road for a series of live shows with Aprés Match’s Barry Murphy.
The three-hour, no-holds barred event – kicking off in Vicar Street on 5 December – will also include Hamann, Giles and Brady in what is being billed as an ‘intimate evening with the Premiership A-Team’.
They promise to answer “all questions” and be as passionate as always.
“There’s also a bar,” adds Dunphy, with a chuckle.
Check out TheJournal.ie and The42.ie for more with our interview with Dunphy and Didi Hamann.
Camera and editing: Nicky Ryan
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