Sport Can Be a Dirty Game

Irish Voice Sport

Sport Can Be a Dirty Game

September 28, 2007

By Cathal Dervan

RONAN O’Gara held his head high as he stood in the mixed zone that serves as a post-match meeting place for players and journalists after Ireland’s latest Rugby World Cup disaster against France on Friday night. It must have been difficult for the Corkonian to look the media straight in the eye, but he had a story to tell and he wanted to tell it after the French media had thrown his private life around like their team had thrown the ball around an hour or so earlier.

Some called it a dirty tricks campaign, others tried to justify it, but there was no denying that the claims published by the French publication L’Equipe and others with regard to O’Gara’s marriage and his fondness for a bet had set an ugly agenda ahead of his far from perfect performance in the Stade de France.

“I didn’t expect this starting off rugby as a kid in Cork, I didn’t expect that I was going to make a life like this and I didn’t ask for it,” said O’Gara as he denied all the rumor and innuendo.

And, I have to say, I knew exactly what he meant.

Many years ago, as an apprentice journalist on The Meath Chronicle at a time when it was the only paper in Navan town, a choice had to be made between news or sport, between fact or fun.

In those days, you see, young journalistic wannabes didn’t have a multitude of college courses to choose between. It was either learn your trade at the local paper or spend the rest of your life wondering about what might have been.

Sport was always the clear favorite for me simply because it has been the one abiding passion in my life for as long as I can remember. Ever since Arsenal’s Charlie George stuck the ball in the back of the Liverpool net in the 1971 FA Cup final, the first big match to make it into our house in color, soccer has been the predominant focus of attention.

Unfortunately, back in 1982 there wasn’t much call for a soccer reporter on the local paper in Navan. Indeed the week I joined the paper the football coverage consisted of one report on a Parkvilla first team game that stretched to three paragraphs, and a couple of bits and pieces from the Mid-Meath League that wouldn’t have filled a classified ad.

By the time I left, five years later, the Meath and District League was fully alive and kicking and over a broadsheet page worth of copy appeared in what was once a GAA dominated publication, but that’s a story for another day.

Early in the apprenticeship, in between making coffee and running to the shop, I was sent to cover the imminent death of the father of a local politician. Sensing the sympathetic support he would receive in the forthcoming elections, said politician insisted I wait in the family home until his father died, simply to ensure the news made the front page the next day.

With no mobile phones and no Internet in those far off days, it was vital that the kid from the paper stay around long enough to bring the news back down the hill in time for the edition. That’s why I was told to race down to Market Square just as soon as the poor man had drawn his final breath.

I was no further than the front gate when the call came to stop. Daddy had made a miraculous recovery and the story was lost in terms of immediate impact.

As it happened, the poor man didn’t die for some weeks by which stage I had made the decision – news was not a port of call for me.

I’m only telling you this story because of those events deep in the bowels of the Stade de France late on Friday night as the obituaries were being chiseled out for the golden generation of Irish rugby.

Never for a second when I opted for sport over news all those years ago did I believe that one day, or one night to be precise, I would find myself discussing marital problems and an alleged gambling habit with one of the finest rugby players of his generation just minutes after a lesson in World Cup belief and conviction from the tournament hosts.

Yet that’s exactly what happened as the midnight hour approached on Friday, and Ronan O’Gara sought refuge from the world of scurrilous rumor, counter rumor and allegations about his relationship with his wife Jessica and his fondness for a flutter or two.

Not an hour after the World Cup had come crashing down around him in a game France thoroughly deserved to win, O’Gara sought to put the record straight describing those who perpetrated the rumors as the lowest of the low.

Sadly the treatment of O’Gara, illustrated by stories printed in the French media but orchestrated by gossip mongers back at home, has not come as a surprise.

Sport in its purest form is no longer enough for a media that is now 24/7. We have to know who is doing what and to whom and why before we can digest and dissect anything as trivial as a rugby match.

Those who make their living from sport, those who carry our national ambition on their shoulders, are there as cannon fodder for the sensationalists, sitting targets for the vultures, and there is nothing we can do about it.

We can hanker back for the good old days when sport was sport and rumor and gossip was something for down the pub, but we will never see those days again, and frankly we are all the poorer for it.

After standing in front of O’Gara late on Friday night and witnessing the hurt in his eyes at first hand, I no longer really care what happens against Argentina on Friday night.

Once upon a time it was only a game. Now professional sport is a weapon to batter and break good people like Ronan O’Gara and Stephen Staunton with.

I don’t like it but I can’t stop it. And it’s too late to take up life as a news reporter!

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