“Glenbeigh-Glencar are All-Ireland junior football champions.”
The screams, the emotion, the hoarseness… the tears. You can hear them. You can hear every last drop of them when they fell from Ger O’Connor’s face, presumably alongside the sweat that dripped from the edge of his Hogan Stand seat.
The only thing better than Radio Kerry commentary is Radio Kerry commentary with a club man calling the biggest day in his club’s history.
If ever you needed to know what the GAA was all about, Sunday in Croke Park, Darran O’Sullivan’s performance through injury, Radio Kerry and it’s spine-tingling magic captured it all and they captured it perfectly.
“This definitely tops anything I’ve done before. It’s hard to put into words just what this emotion and this journey means to the parish,” Darran O’Sullivan stood with a massive bandage encircling his left thigh after the Kerry men became junior champions of the entire island.
The physio wanted to take him off – as if that was ever an option.
Hair-raising from @GlenbeighcarGAA's @Darransull86 https://t.co/0OX39gyOCH #TheToughest
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) February 19, 2017
But more than their proud footballers or their rich tradition and heritage, they do other things better in Kerry too.
They don’t talk about football, they let it drip from their tongues. They don’t commentate, they feel. And they bring you along on that passion-filled journey as if it was the only thing in the world that ever mattered.
Kieran Donaghy beautifully summed up the institution that is Radio Kerry on The GAA Hour at the end of last year and how the station can help remind them just what the GAA really means in the Kingdom.
“We were leaving for Galway and we were in the car and Radio Kerry were doing something about the game we had just lost to Dublin, the All-Ireland semi-final,” Donaghy recalled.
“And yeah I was low and disappointed we lost. We were going up in the car and they played the five minutes before half-time where we get the run on Dublin and the commentator is literally losing his life.
“We go from five points down to five points up and you can hear the crowd on the radio, they’re going ‘Kerry! Kerry!’ And I was going, ‘it is special to be a part of that. To see it from the other side and give those people in the crowd, that they are getting such joy, and that commentator is getting such joy’.
“And there is a fella sitting out next to a wireless in Dingle and he is 85-years-old and he is absolutely lifting that Kerry are winning and of course at the end he is distraught, like the rest of us. But even that period that you are able to help bring that to somebody’s life and to somebody’s heart at that moment in time – that’s what made me realise this is more than winning.”
That’s why it’s more than commentary in Radio Kerry.
And the closing exchanges of Glenbeigh-Glencar’s All-Ireland victory on Sunday were called to absolute, hair-raising perfection by Ger O’Connor. His club did it on the big stage, in the biggest arena and, for a while, he was just lost in the game and we all fell into it with him.
This is more than commentary because this is more than a game.
That there was 10 minutes of injury time only added to the drama.
Give this a listen. You won’t regret it.
