Broadcasters just a part of the bigger picture

GAELIC GAMES: KEITH DUGGANreports on the acrimonious departure of two men long associated with TV coverage of Gaelic games in Northern Ireland

THE TELEVISION coverage of GAA matters in Northern Ireland has changed irrevocably in two respects over the last two seasons. For over two decades, UTV’s Adrian Logan and BBC’s Jerome Quinn were unquestionably the faces – and voices – most associated with the presentation of Gaelic games for both broadcasters in the country. Then, they were gone. Logan ended an auspicious career with UTV in what he diplomatically describes as “difficult circumstances”.

Unhappy with what he felt to be a serious demotion of his role within UTV, he took a case against his former employers and won. Quinn’s departure from BBC was more publicised and messier: fired from his job in March of 2009, he engaged the BBC in an employment tribunal which found against him heavily. Quinn argued that he was dismissed on religious and discriminatory grounds.

But the tribunal found the broadcaster was justified in dismissing him after they discovered he had been posting comments that were deemed damaging to the BBC on various websites concerning Gaelic games – including the GAA’s own message board – under the memorable “handle” of “Bloody Mary”.

“I wish I hadn’t done it. I was naïve,” Quinn says now. “But I didn’t go out to start anything. There was a campaign there anyway [about the BBC’s coverage of Gaelic games]. I contributed a wee bit but I was not the main thing. And there were posts contributed under that name were not submitted by me.

“I feel now that when I look obviously, it was wrong. It was anti-BBC. I put up stuff about colleagues that I felt was humorous. I didn’t think it was malicious. I feel they should have handled it internally. They felt they were justified because of the tribunal. I wish I hadn’t gone to the tribunal. I paid a big price and I recognise I made a mistake and people around me suffered as well.”

The details of Quinn’s case were covered in great detail in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland during the tribunal, which found that Quinn was “evasive as a witness”; vague when certain questions were put to him but quite vehement in responses that substantiated his case.

Scrolling through old photographs of his BBC days in the living room of his home on the outskirts of Belfast, it is obvious that on a personal level, Quinn has experienced an enormously turbulent and distressing two years.

But it is also impossible to avoid the fact that through his actions, he was architect of his own downfall. Quinn feels his difficulties within the BBC began and soon escalated with the appointment of Shane Glynn as the head of sport there in 2006. He maintains his role with in the station was marginalised prior to his dismissal, with the decision to remove him from anchor of The Championship programme being the starkest example.

The obvious response to this is that television is a notoriously fickle business: shows change presenters all the time and those in charge of making such decisions are surely entitled to have whoever they choose fronting their shows. “It does happen,” Quinn agrees. “But not after 18 years when you are at the peak of your career. I asked if I had done anything wrong and was told I’d done a great job but they were going a different direction. After that, I was on radio.”

He also believes he was continually fighting to have Gaelic games maintain anything like the same profile as the other main sports – namely rugby and soccer. He instances the occasion when Tyrone footballer Stephen O’Neill was due to come out of retirement – a story Quinn got hold of due to his extensive contacts in his native county.

He recalls Glynn asked him to introduce the radio story by giving O’Neill’s importance to Tyrone – and to Gaelic games by placing him in context; by stating that it was comparable to Brian O’Driscoll returning to the Irish rugby team or David Healy returning to the Northern Ireland football team. Quinn submitted his report without making that comparison. He nods when it is put to him that perhaps Glynn was simply trying to paint a picture for listeners in Northern Ireland who may not have a strong grasp on Gaelic games.

“Yeah. I can see what you are saying. But that attitude prevailed over all of the GAA coverage and it was insulting. This is not a backwater sport. It is a major sport in Northern Ireland.

“I just felt there was a constant reminder that it was not one of the big sports. I tried to work this out inside. In the tribunal, I was made out to be a monster, a “cyber bully”. But I was told that there is a strata of importance of sport in Northern Ireland. I felt that GAA merited more and that the attitude was flawed.”

The more you listen to Quinn talking through his career, the more it becomes clear the bigger issue is not about the rights and wrongs of his individual career, but the unavoidable way in which the prevailing societal issues in Northern Ireland inevitably cut through sport.

Quinn’s rise in BBC was heady.

“I was 24, a radio producer in BBC Foyle. Jim Neilly was made head of sport, a post came up and I got it.

“He wanted a Match of the Day-type programme for the Ulster Championship and I was in the right spot of the right time. I was the first Catholic to come into the sports department in either a presentation or production role, as far as I know. Suddenly, I was valuable because I knew about the GAA.”

Quinn was a presenter on the inaugural BBC The Championship programme in May 1990. Anyone watching BBC NI in the coming years could but draw conclusion that Quinn was regarded as darling boy by the broadcaster; he soon became one of the most high-profile sportscasters for the station. He did not report exclusively on Gaelic games; Irish League football and rugby were also part of his beat. But he quickly became known as BBC’s face of GAA. And in Northern Ireland, that was a conspicuous mask to wear.

“When I went along to a Gaelic match, people would break conversation to say hello to you. But when I went to a match in Windsor Park, say, people would look at the ground. Heads went down. I always remember being in Windsor one evening to do a wrap on a Glentoran/Linfield match. I think it was a Gold Cup match. All the fans had been celebrating near the pitch and in great form. When it was my turn to do the wrap, they suddenly turned into a mob. Yelling all sorts of abuse. I will never forget their faces. I thought it was sad. When Jackie Fullerton handed me the microphone to do my wrap, the mood changed. I think my BBC colleagues felt sheepish and embarrassed about it. But issues like that were not talked about. They were swept under the carpet.”

Adrian Logan’s television career began in 1984. A report initiated by the County Down GAA board monitoring the coverage of Gaelic games on Northern Irish television led, indirectly or otherwise, to the creation of a post within the sports department, which Logan secured. His enthusiastic and cheerful presentation quickly made him a household name and face across Northern Ireland and the province of Ulster.

His sudden disappearance from the station was widely noted and he admits that leaving was difficult.

“I miss it. It was a job that I loved doing and always felt very lucky to be doing and to be fair, I covered some great events with UTV and got to travel the world. But in terms of covering the GAA, it was always hard to sell. I’m proud of the work we did and there were plenty of staff there who put a genuine effort into it. But it was hard to feel the station really backed it.

“We would have had one camera available to us on a Sunday whereas on a Saturday, there would be multi cameras available for soccer. And that is right! I think all Irish League Games should be covered. But so should big GAA matches. When we started putting together our show, we ended up calling in Frank Mitchell, the weather man, because he had won two club All-Irelands playing with Burren and he was one of the few people within the station who knew Gaelic games.

“And there were other things. For instance, I could never sell the idea of corporate tickets for GAA games to the executive within UTV. And the other big difficulty was that traditionally, people watched championship games on RTÉ so when we went arguing that there should be greater coverage, they could point to the viewing figures and say that the numbers weren’t there. But the potential was. When you are getting 20,000 people at a McKenna Cup game, it is clear there is a potential audience there.

“We ran the End to End show from 2001 until 2004 and got a lot of slagging for it. But it was a great wee show and when it went, everyone was asking why. But it is a real Northern Irish Catholic thing to give out among themselves without complaining about it.”

Quinn felt that the lack of available cameras on a Sunday was an issue in BBC as well. When he heard, in October of 2008, just weeks after Tyrone had won the All-Ireland and when there were several Ulster club championship matches on, that the camera normally allocated to Gaelic games was being used to cover a surfing tournament in Portrush, he posted disparaging comments about the BBC’s GAA coverage that led to an internal IT investigation. He was suspended in February 2009 after reading a morning radio bulletin – he recalls that one of the items included was about Cork’s Setanta Ó hAilpín getting into disciplinary trouble in the Australian Football League.

He was escorted from the building that morning and was dismissed on March 18th. He returned to the BBC building once, late at night, to pick up personal items.

“They claimed that the posts broke all the editorial guidelines. Did I deserve it? Was it fair? I had no income and no idea what to do. My colleagues were sympathetic. Some of them. But time goes on. I couldn’t say a lot at the time. You are in a state of limbo. People would hear mixed up versions of what was said in the tribunal: ‘I heard you threatened a guy on a train or sent threatening letters’. The stigma is there. It does immense damage. The GAA community was fantastic. They know the BBC and where I was coming from. They won the tribunal but have they won over the GAA community? No. Now, I can enjoy what I do. I didn’t enjoy the last few years at the BBC.”

A source within the GAA’s Ulster Council confirmed that around that period – 2008 – there had been grave concerns about the coverage of Gaelic Games by the two major broadcasters and that these concerns had been raised. However, they acknowledged that the licence to cover certain GAA fixtures was compromised by the complexity of analogue and digital television rights. It was also pointed out that last year – 2010 – saw a marked improvement in the coverage of their games in comparison to previous years, “But the general feeling within the GAA would be that both BBC and UTV could do more,” the source said.

The BBC has declined to comment on Quinn’s dismissal either before or after the tribunal. Asked yesterday whether BBC Northern Ireland felt the coverage of Gaelic games compared favourably with the coverage of other major sports, a spokesperson said: “BBC NI is currently in discussions with the GAA and remains hopeful that it can maintain its current level of GAA-related output across radio, television and on-line. Our most recent contract allowed us to provide BBC audiences with live coverage of Ulster championship matches including the quarter-final, semi-final and final, access to All-Ireland championship fixtures involving Ulster teams. This programming is a popular and important element within the BBC’s sports output.

“It reflects our commitment to bringing live coverage of large-scale sporting fixtures to the widest possible audience and forms part of a programme portfolio that seeks to reflect all aspects of life within the region. The nature, scale and extent of our coverage of individual sports will always be contingent on our ability to secure broadcast rights. . . .”

Television is fickle and presenters come and go but for GAA fans in Northern Ireland, Adrian Logan and Jerome Quinn will be recognised longer than most. “Logie” is keeping busy as ever. Quinn is now a web video journalist. He focuses mostly on his passion – grassroots GAA in Northern Ireland, but not exclusively so. This morning, for instance, he is the man behind the camera at a Royal School Dungannon versus Antrim Grammar schools rugby game.