“Sometimes I just like to have fun on TV…”
Joe Brolly and Colm Parkinson sitting on a couch having it out over The Sunday Game. About bloody time.
You’re not supposed to take football too seriously – that’s Joe Brolly’s thinking. He’ll take you on tactically if you want – he even asked Wooly to put anything analytical to him – but he’s not going to get bogged down by the overly PC culture of today’s world and the endless complaints that RTÉ don’t do this or that.
He appeared on SportsJOE Live last summer with Ronan O’Gara for a rip-roaring episode and he launched a passionate defence of the national broadcaster’s coverage of Gaelic Football.
Paul Galvin lambasted the show in his Sunday Times column when he labelled it reductive:
“The show is a liability to the GAA and now a liability to RTE too,” the Kerry man wrote.
“If the powers-that-be in Croke Park and Montrose have any vision they will get together, take it off the air at the end of the season, rebrand it and relaunch it with new talent in a new direction.
“The current offering is reductive, agenda-led and has been mired in a culture of bias for 10 years.”
However, Joe Brolly hit back on SportsJOE Live.
“If RTÉ offer him a job, all that disappears,” Brolly said before going into a broader point.
“Graeme Souness once said there was a huge difference in working for Sky and RTÉ – you have to be positive all the time on Sky. You couldn’t criticise anything, everything is rehearsed.
“I discuss the game as if I was standing in a bar with a pint of stout talking to you about it.
“Nobody ever said to me on RTÉ that you ought not to say that.”
Of course, the Derry man was pressed on matters by Wooly, especially about his comments on Pat Spillane but Brolly was unrepentant.
“Sometimes I just like to have fun on TV,” he smiled.
“Francis Urquhart said on the original House of Cards, ‘it’s time to put a bit of stick about’.
“Pat’s an acquired taste. My father has a great line, ‘he’s alright if you like that sort of thing’.
“I wouldn’t be a great of fan of Pat’s – I’d be a great fan of Colm O’Rourke.”
It all kicks off from 24:47 below.
