I was directed to Swan\u2019s Lane where he would leave word with the stewards. Having sidled up the narrow laneway \u2013 now incorporated into the new stadium, then used for access to accredited matches \u2013 and gingerly explained there was a pass for me, I was crestfallen as peals of laughter broke out in a contagion all around.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re the fella that washed his ticket!\u201d<\/p>\n
In the years to come I became very friendly with Danny and could only imagine the chortling discourse as he briefed them that an eejit would be presenting himself that afternoon.<\/p>\n
It was in its own way, a useful lesson. Prolixity is \u2013 ahem \u2013 the scourge of reporting. Never embark on a rambling narrative when a simple \u201cI\u2019ve lost my ticket\u201d will suffice.<\/p>\n
So, life in the press box started in Swan\u2019s Lane after I had lost my ticket.<\/p>\n
Conversation was originally like oxygen in the GAA. Endless and often intense discussions about whatever was current were widely available. The association represents the collective triumph of ordinary people.<\/p>\n
At whatever level they operate, these members as administrators or coaches and selectors or players, are part of the chain that holds together a central paradox.<\/p>\n
The same people by and large look after both the minutiae of an enormous volunteer-driven organisation that arranges community-based recreation for all ages and also runs an elite, mass-spectator sport, which at this time of the year fills one of the biggest stadiums in Europe.<\/p>\n
[\u00a0All-Ireland football final by the numbers: For Mayo, 75 needs no explainingOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n From an early stage, I took advantage of this disposition to chat. The late Eamonn Coleman got calls from me all the time when he became manager of Derry. I discussed his team and general matters, and he gave me the benefit of some bracingly frank views.<\/p>\n In the early days, before I had actually met the Derry manager, a colleague asked him a question in the post-match scrum that followed a league match. He looked at him quizzically and asked, \u201cAre you the boy that rings me all the time\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cI am,\u201d came the brazen response.<\/p>\n Interminable telephone conversations with managers would prove to be an unsustainable modus operandi. As media outlets ballooned in numbers, even allocating a few minutes to all the reporters who called became impossible.<\/p>\n Access to players and team management has atrophied over the years. It\u2019s not all to do with the unfeasibility of taking calls from everyone and management have actively restricted the engagement of their players.<\/p>\n Even \u201cpress nights\u201d that originally provided an abundance of players, free to be collared and interviewed one-to-one, have evolved into antiseptic routines with mass interactions. Sometimes, the answers are genuinely arresting but they will be spread across all titles and platforms.<\/p>\n Ordinary conversations have in some cases become obsolete. Social media is used for basic announcements, one impact of which has been to render obsolete some phone calls to county officers and public relations officers.<\/p>\n These were useful for the range of topics broached and the opportunity to get ground-level view of how things were going, including on the playing field.<\/p>\n Not that they were always productive. One public relations officer, who was an exemplar of best practice, came home one night tired and my droning conversation put him under \u2013 I became aware when snoring could be heard on the other end.<\/p>\n He snapped out of the reverie and was terribly apologetic but realistically, it was more a cause of embarrassment for me.<\/p>\n There\u2019s no way of avoiding bad feeling if it\u2019s the outcome of genuine differences of opinion. To get by, we need the engagement of everyone, administrators both national and local as well as managers and teams, even if that has become almost entirely curated by product launches or post-match protocols.<\/p>\n Unpleasantness can ensue but it is unavoidable unless media become latter-day Monkees \u2013 too busy singing to put anybody down.<\/p>\n My career was the era of technology\u2019s first steps. Ostensibly, it made things easier, but in the early years of dial-up we had to go out into the world looking for hotels where we could work and ask to access phone lines.<\/p>\n Some establishments would warily refuse as if the little lead with the telephone jack might be capable of sucking a season\u2019s profits out of their business. Others were more co-operative but we still had to get down on our knees and disconnect the fax machine in order to get a direct line out.<\/p>\n In general, though, the hospitality industry was very helpful in giving us the use of rooms or business centres, deserted on a Sunday, in return for which they did some trade in tea and biscuits.<\/p>\n On the first international tour to Australia in 1986, the only such trip I didn\u2019t make, The Irish Times was the only newspaper with a fax machine. Four years later, I had the late, lamented Sunday Tribune\u2019s Tandy, a primitive laptop with a modem that worked by Velcro-ing \u201cacoustic couplers\u201d around the earpiece and mouthpiece of a telephone handset.<\/p>\n On unstable lines from the other side of the world, transmission was uncertain and usually cut out after issuing 200 words to Baggot Street before the connection expired, exhausted.<\/p>\n We used to be amused by the confounded demeanour of older colleagues as they tried to master mobile phones and laptops but it hasn\u2019t taken long to become the new generation of \u201cPissed Old Hacks Baffled by New Technology,\u201d as designated by Private Eye.<\/p>\n In the early days, The Troubles were still a presence. Just months before I started in The Irish Times, the IRA ceasefire had been announced and the slow progress to peace began.<\/p>\n Those awful 25 years took a heavy toll on the people of Northern Ireland, and the GAA as a cultural symbol of Irish identity found itself at times on the front line.<\/p>\n Yet, almost as the herald of an increasingly resurgent community, Ulster football rose to the top in the very years leading to the beginning of the end.<\/p>\n Down led the way with appropriate symmetry, having been the last pre-Troubles All-Ireland winners in 1968, when they carried off the province\u2019s next Sam Maguire in 1991, followed by Donegal and Derry before rounding off the ceasefire summer with another title in 1994.<\/p>\n No more than others on the island, the GAA had to make its own cultural accommodations. The old Rule 21, prohibiting members of British security forces from membership of the association, had to go for fear that the GAA would be effectively blocking young nationalists from joining the newly established PSNI.<\/p>\n In time, the related ban on other sports using GAA grounds would also go and we had God Save the Queen played at Croke Park before a rugby match. And the sky did not fall.<\/p>\n I remember an older colleague once saying that he wasn\u2019t particularly interested in being a GAA correspondent because he would never again set foot on a plane.<\/p>\n That wasn\u2019t always the case. In my freelance days, as an investment in my then uncertain career I took a loss-leading trip for the 1990 international rules series. The Sunday Tribune and a couple of other places took stuff from me \u2013 and most paid \u2013 but not enough to cover costs.<\/p>\n I reasoned that I was also getting to see Australia and never regretted the trip. It left me with an abiding interest in the possibilities of the hybrid game, which by now look fairly limited given the trajectory of the constituent sports.<\/p>\n Other occasions included the golden jubilee of the Polo Grounds final in New York in 1997 when Rudy Giuliani, on the road to first acclaim as America\u2019s mayor after September 11th and latterly disgrace as a hapless Trump toady, threw in the ball for the Cavan-Kerry commemorative league match.<\/p>\n I also spent a freezing couple of days in Scotland when the GAA flew us out to watch the hurling-shinty international rules. At the pre-match lunch on Saturday, the Provost of Inverness spoke about the challenges for shinty in the modern (1999) world and how there was simply so much for young people to do in Inverness.<\/p>\n Having sampled the nightlife the previous evening, we stared into the cock-a-leekie soup and said nothing.<\/p>\n![\"Derry](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/VBDSRDQJHBG6FKJ3TNYHYHEV6I.jpg\")
Derry manager Eamonn Coleman in 1999. Photograph: Billy Stickland\/Inpho <\/p>\n![\"Kerry’s](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/A6QVXCUH6FFRBMWLGUY5XCNPR4.jpg\")
Kerry\u2019s Bryan Sheehan meeting the press in 2008. Photograph: Lorraine O’Sullivan\/Inpho <\/p>\n![\"Down’s](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/SEFLNL5HQ5FHDCJATYTQKP66XM.jpg\")
Down\u2019s Paul Higgins celebrates after the 1991 All-Ireland football final in Croke Park. Photograph: Billy Stickland\/Inpho <\/p>\n
![\"Tyrone’s](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/6W5VNBR5NPGJIA34DKA3FYXQNQ.jpg\")
Tyrone\u2019s Cormac McAnallen died in his sleep at home aged 24. Photograph: Andrew Paton\/Inpho <\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/S4GAIGHIFFD3DJ7YJA5376OOVI.jpg\")
The Semple Stadium press box in Thurles, Co Tipperary. Photograph: James Crombie\/Inpho <\/p>\n