Becher's, balls and brilliance

THE decision to take the 1947 All Ireland Football Final to New York was strange enough, but the convoluted journey to the Polo Grounds in the autumn of that year - to a match which was to embellish broadcasting legend Michael O'Hehir's reputation - doesn't bear thinking about.

Three quarters of the party were afraid of flying and, so, undertook the transatlantic crossing by boat; the remainder went by aircraft on the sort of nightmarish 29 hour journey that would provide the modern GAA with an immediate deterrent to the problem of the inter county weekend tripper.

"We left from Shannon, went to Santa Maria in the Azores, from there to Gander, in Newfoundland, then on to Boston, and from Boston to New York," recalled O'Hehir some years later. "Part of the reason was that there was a full plane and plenty of baggage. TWA put it to the party, sometime in the middle of the night, that if we left five people behind, to follow on in a couple of days' time, then we could fly direct to Boston. And of course nobody voted for anyone to be left behind."

The actual vote to bring the match to the Big Apple has some similarities with the manner in which Jack Charlton acquired the Irish soccer manager's job. A leading GAA clergyman felt it would do wonders for the diaspora to hold the Cavan Kerry final in New York. Almost everyone was opposed to the plan. But, during a break in the Central Council meeting at which the vote was to be taken, a number of people canvassed others to give the proposer "a few votes so that he won't be too hurt." The canvassers did their job too well. The vote was carried.

And so it was that O'Hehir found himself ensconced high up in the stands of the baseball ground and, staring across at the giant clock on the opposite side of the pitch, with ten minutes left in the match, realising that just five minutes remained on the prebooked and pre paid lines back to Ireland. He started to make an appeal - live, on air - for the lines to be kept open. "If there's anybody listening in who thinks this broadcast should end at five o'clock, please leave us on for just five minutes more," went the plea. It worked: the Irish nation heard every last syllable of O'Hehir's broadcast. His place in Irish folklore was cemented.

O'Hehir's introduction to radio broadcasting was itself pretty unique. Wearing his O'Connell's CBS blazer and cap, he underwent a test - along with four other aspiring broadcasters - during a Louth Wexford National Football League match at Croke Park in May 1938. He was 18. It was a private broadcast, transmitted back to the then director of broadcasting at Radio Eireann, Dr T J Kiernan, who was later Ambassador in Washington and Australia. Hearing O'Hehir, Kiernan called up the technician and told him to get "the man who did the last five minutes to do the second half."

His first public broadcast came that August when he was paid three pounds and ten shillings (including expenses for the trip to Mullingar) to cover the All Ireland football semi final between Galway and Monaghan. O'Hehir's first All Ireland Final was the football encounter with Galway and Kerry in 1938.

The so called "Thunder and Lightning Final" of 1939 was O'Hehir's first hurling decider. "A most awful storm hit Croke Park - Kilkenny and Cork were playing and, looking at them, you wouldn't think it was even raining, but the lightning was flashing around the place. In those days, there was one microphone which covered the commentator, the crowd, the band, everything. This was a round thing that was up over my head in the box. Lightning was flashing off this and going along the wires. It could have been frightening, but the match was so good you didn't notice it."

He established a reputation as the consummate professional broadcaster, respected everywhere. But he wasn't immune to the phenomenon which Private Eye magazine christened Colemanballs after British commentator David Coleman.

One story O'Hehir often told against himself went something like this: "A boiling hot day in Croke Park... Kilkenny were playing Cork, who had a player, Alan Lotty, and it was very warm, so he took off his boots. Five or ten minutes later, he took off his socks. Then he catches a ball and the hurley is knocked out of his hands, and I go blazing away... `And there he is, Alan Lotty. He may be bootless, he may be sockless, he may be stickless, but he is certainly not ball less'."

Another yarn he enjoyed telling concerned the Grand National. Traditionally, he was positioned at Becher's Brook, a notorious position for commentators as well as for horse and jockey. "It was one of the first years that they had thrown open the inside of the track and there were literally hundreds of people between me and the fence. The horses come over, I see Highland Wedding disappearing behind the crowd and I say, `Highland Wedding is gone!' I hadn't it out of my mouth when the resurrection took place."

By the end of his broadcasting career, O'Hehir was commentating on between 20 to 30 matches a year, as well as performing extensive racing commentaries around the world (including every year at Aintree except two since 1946, always at Becher's Brook).

O'Hehir believed in getting passionately involved in sporting action. He once said: "You mustn't stand back or sit back, aloof, away from it. You must be part of it all. If you're not, you're not doing your job." Such an approach captured the hearts of Irish people, from the days of the wet and dry batteries right through to the modern television age.