The late Bill O'Hearlihy, whose death shocked the sports loving nation
genuinely shocked anyone with
a love of soccer and sport in this
country.
The veteran RTE broadcaster,
a presence on our screens for
over almost 50 years, brought a
brilliant journalistic sensibility
to his anchoring of soccer and
Olympic coverage.
A great newsman, O’Herlihy
was ‘condemned’ to RTE’s
Sports Department following
his on illegal moneylending
which aired on the ‘7 Days’
programme in November 1969
which, bizarrely in retrospect,
led to the fi rst Tribunal ever
held in this State.
This controversy was first
brought to my attention in my
DIT days by my Final Year
tutor and another exemplary
newsman, Muiris MacConghail,
who was Editor and Producer of
‘7 Days’ at the time.
He, like O’Herlihy, never
reconciled himself with the
Government’s decision to hold
such a public investigation, and
when one considers matters in
the intervening period deemed
unworthy of Tribunal status,
their frustration was all the
more understandable.
O’Herlihy’s loss to News
and Current Affairs was very
much RTE Sport’s gain, and he
brought an intellectual gravitas
to the presentation of sport and
the on-air discourse he chaired
between panellists to a level
still not equalled on British
television.
The journalistic gifts of
both O’Herlihy and the
recently deceased Derek
Davis represented genuinely
irreplaceable talent at Montrose,
perhaps not as recognised in life
as it will surely be assessed in
the cases of both in the years
ahead.
But Billo’s place in our
affection, as the man who
articulated the curiosity, joy and
disappointment of the country’s
soccer loving punters, was
assured long before his death.
He will be missed.
