Jimmy Magee: giant of sports broadcasting in Ireland

Jimmy Magee, whose death this week at the age of 82 prompted an outpouring of sorrow across a broad spectrum of Irish society, will be remembered as a man whose infectious love for broadcasting sport endeared him even to people with only the tiniest affinity with the national pastime.

Over a period of more than 50 years his voice became synonymous with the rise and rise of Irish performances in the world of international sport, and as with some of his contemporaries, his life was measured in terms of coverage of the major events such as the Olympic Games, World Cup finals, world and European championships in sports such as football, athletics and boxing.

And throughout it all he managed to maintain his schoolboy enthusiasm for sport, first manifested in a field at the back of his home in Cooley, Co Louth, where apparently he did a reasonable impersonation of Michael O’Hehir at a time when O’Hehir was the yardstick by which all other aspiring sports commentators measured their progress.

Magee was born in New York but was taken back to Ireland as a child and, after completing his education at local schools, landed a job at Greenore railway station at a time when the old Dundalk, Newry and Greenore line serving the Cooley peninsula was still surviving if not exactly thriving. Thus began a sometimes hilarious if brief career in rail,boats and kindred matters appertaining to the transportation of people, animals and freight.

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He was apt to recall an incident which presaged some memorable experiences in his early flirtation with the business. Occasionally it was his responsibility to open the station in the morning but, after sleeping it out on one such occasion, he was still frantically running down a hill overlooking the ticket office when he saw intending passengers, some entering middle age, attempting to clamber over the gate in order to catch the train about to leave the station.

Moved to Dublin

The episode scarcely did much to enhance his career prospects but soon afterwards the station closed and, like all his colleagues there, he found himself moved, in his words, to a “less strategic post” in Dublin, this time in the old British Railway offices at North Wall.

In stark contrast to Greenore, North Wall was a hive of activity at the time with the company employing several hundred people, not all of them in zealous pursuit of a career on the railways. In time, Magee found himself working alongside people with ambitions of becoming barristers, journalists, playwrights, actors and, in one case, scriptwriter for what was then Radio Éireann.

It was a hotchpotch of ambition, accommodated with commendable tolerance by those in charge, and it suited him perfectly. Set down in this environment, he was motivated to strive even harder to gain a foothold in the Radio Éireann station in the GPO.

His big break came in 1956 when the indefatigable Harry Thuillier persuaded Séamus Kavanagh, head of childrens’ programmes at the station, to divert part of his departmental budget into funding a live sports reporting programme on Saturday afternoons. It proved a master stroke in diplomacy, circumventing other vested interests who had had dismissed the notion out of hand, and apart from Magee it provided people such as John Bowman, Jim Norton, Seán Diffley and Peter Byrne with an entry to bigger things.

Thuillier’s philosophy was to send young people, armed with giant-sized tape recorders, out to venues around the city for on-the-spot coverage of the bigger events of the day, a brave innovation which debunked much of the mystique surrounding broadcasting in Ireland at the time. And it ushered in a new era which in time would lead to worldwide coverage of sports events by the national broadcaster.

In 1961, Magee abandoned his flirtation with the railways to devote himself full time to broadcasting, scripting programmes for Thuillier at a time when sponsored commercial programmes dominated the afternoon schedule on Radio Éireann.

It also enabled him to indulge his other passion, music. Apart from harbouring hopes of becoming a professional footballer, Magee had notions at one stage of his youth of joining Frankie Blowers as a high-profile crooner in the capital, and when this too foundered he decided to involve himself in the management of vocalists, a development which led him to the introduction of a top-10 chart, based on sales in record shops, the first of its kind in the country.

All Stars

Ever a man to crowd as much as possible into a day's work, he later came up with the idea of blending his interests in sport and music to form the Jimmy Magee All Stars team, a combination of prominent showband and sporting celebrities of the era, a project which raised hundreds of thousands of pounds for charitable causes by playing in matches at rural venues across the country.

In a career which took him to the majority of the major sporting events across the world, he clocked up thousands of air miles, and when his schedule at Montrose became less hectic he continued in somewhat the same vein as vice-president of the Association of Sports Journalists in Ireland.

A smiling face even in situations of intense pressure, he gave a helping hand when young, aspiring journalists came in search of advice and encouragement on the road he had once travelled. In that, as in so much else, he shall be greatly missed.

He was predeceased by his wife, Marie, and elder son, Paul, and is survived by daughters Linda, June and Patricia and son Mark.