Late Late Show - GAA Special

[RedandGreenSniper]

I was shocked to read in this week's OTF in the Irish News that representatives from the Omagh Scor team (All-Ireland Champions) had been invited to take part in the show but were then more or less told where to go when The Saw Doctors took preference. 
What a bloody disgrace.  Give me the Omagh Scor team any day ahead of The Saw Doctors or that puke Brush Shields. 

I don't know what RTE pay the Saw Doctors or Brush Shields but, having seen the Omagh Scor participants perform, I do know who would have provided the greater entertainment for this show.  

Saw Doctors were one of the few positives from the night in my opinion. A good band and one whose heart lies with the GAA, they were a fitting band to start the night. Pity the night went downhill from then on

[Rudi]

In fairness the Saw Doctors are iconic way out west, I often seen them playing on the streets prior to a big championship game in Tuam. Fail to see what problem this board has with a bunch of gaa following hoodlums like this mighty band. As I have allready stated the show was a big Dublin V Kerry love in & was not Representative of the broader gaa community, but no need for criticism of the poor auld saw doctors.

[pintsofguinness]

In fairness the Saw Doctors are iconic way out west, I often seen them playing on the streets prior to a big championship game in Tuam. Fail to see what problem this board has with a bunch of gaa following hoodlums like this mighty band. As I have allready stated the show was a big Dublin V Kerry love in & was not Representative of the broader gaa community, but no need for criticism of the poor auld saw doctors.

They could have put the Omagh band in somewhere.

[FermPundit]

By Joe Brolly
I suppose, at least, it was better than watching Fermanagh the following day in the McKenna Cup...

Sound assessment from Brolly but the Donegal v Fermanagh game wasn't that bad, was it?

[Main Street]

By Joe Brolly
I suppose, at least, it was better than watching Fermanagh the following day in the McKenna Cup...

Sound assessment from Brolly but the Donegal v Fermanagh game wasn't that bad, was it?

I wondered about that comment of Brollys, he couldn't have offered a more savage indictment, could he?

[ziggysego]

He probably just said it to get a rise, you know Brolly.

[FermPundit]

By Joe Brolly
I suppose, at least, it was better than watching Fermanagh the following day in the McKenna Cup...

Sound assessment from Brolly but the Donegal v Fermanagh game wasn't that bad, was it?

I wondered about that comment of Brollys, he couldn't have offered a more savage indictment, could he?

No, I don't think he could. Anyway, the days of Fermanagh playing negative, defensive football are long gone...

[Gnevin]

Late Late Show falls flat for GAA celebration
Galway Advertiser, January 15, 2009.

Like many other sports fans I am a big admirer of much of the material produced in the RTE sports department on both TV and radio.

Programmes on television like The Sunday Game, The Premiership, coverage of the rugby championship, the Olympics, World Cups and the like, are usually professionally done and provide considerable quality entertainment.

My licence fee is paid by standing-order every August and I have no real gripe with the television directors/producers who earn their crust in Montrose. They do their job, and many of them do it very well.

In our household we are becoming more radio than TV people anyway - old age and trying to set a good example to the children are taking their toll.

I find myself listening to Morning Ireland and Drive-Time much more now, sitting in traffic, keeping up to date with all the inward bound cut-backs, pay-cuts, or independent TD allowances that are indeed "entitlements" for the chosen few.

Ideally I would prefer to keep a positive seam in this column and I'd like to point out that I think that Pat Kenny is a superb radio interviewer and presenter, but Jumping-Jack-Flash, do I find him hard to take on the Late Late Show (I did say ideally).

He is just so leaden and it all seems such hard work that it makes me feel uncomfortable. I find myself switching channels just to stop myself cringing on his behalf.

However, even that constant view-point did not prepare me for the dreadful and abysmal effort that was trotted out last Friday night as a so-called celebration of the GAA's 125 years.

It was a shocker. A genuine shocker.

So much of the show lacked élan and panache that it became very difficult to stop switching the bloody thing off.

Nevertheless, like a committed sleep-walk, I just ploughed on until the death, hoping that salvation would come from somewhere. It did not.

Kenny as anchor neither knew his subject nor his audience. And he lacked the capacity to engage in conversation or banter with many (any) of his guests - apart from a few high profile Kerry and Dublin footballers from the 1970s.

It was impossible not to laugh or squirm (your choice) when Brush Shiels (what was he doing there?) spoke about floating on air when he performed to a full house in Croke Park. Shiels described being weightless as he ran around the packed stadium, and Pat retorted by saying he too felt that way once - wait for it - "when he passed an exam he had not expected to pass".

Oh-my-god man! Just let it go.

Another major faux-pas is that there is no new material from chatting to the likes of Paidi O' Se, Mick O'Dwyer, Kevin Heffernan, Jimmy Keavney, and Jack O'Shea at this juncture. It has all been said. And their anecdotes are dated and stale. And let's be honest here, the whole goddamn show just seemed to be one big Kerry/Dublin love-in.

There was practically no mention of hurling, despite Henry Shefflin having flown half way around the world to be back for the show.Where was Brian Cody? The Connollys? DJCarey? Jimmy Barry Murphy?

Of course the west of Ireland got a really short-shift.Did the producers never hear of the Galway three-in-a-row team of the 1960s? The Roscommon team of 1942 and 1943, or the Mayo team of '50 and '51?

Why was there not a feature on any of the clubs in the country? Did their target audience consist of only Dublin and Kerry people?

The choice of show for the subject matter was incorrect.

Pat Kenny and The Late Late are one in the same, so one could argue that Pat Kenny isn't the issue, but that The Late Late should never have been used as the platform to celebrate the GAA. That was a crazy decision in the first instance, albeit a cost-effective one.

Fill up studio one with greats and former greats and give a few of them an opportunity to be nostalgic (again) and Bob's your uncle. No expensive outside broadcasts, no innovative features on contemporary Gaelic games. No vision, little entertainment value. The whole thing went down like a lead balloon.

To prove my point: The difference that Dessie Cahill made when he arrived on set was amazing. All of a sudden the mood in the audience picked up and he started - how sad is this for a presenter? - pointing out members in the crowd who should be spoken to like Peter Quinn and Conor O' Shea.

RTE should have called in producers like Paul Byrnes and Bill Lawlor from The Sunday Game team and given them a good budget and let them use their knowledge and expertise to come up with a specific show for the 125 year celebration. It was a glorious opportunity for the national station and the GAA to have worked in tandem to produce a show of which everyone would have been proud. Instead, you had a mongrel of a show that just sickened the majority of GAA people.

If you think I am alone in my views, check out the on-line survey in one of the best GAA sites in the country, Anfearrua.com where nearly 70 per cent of respondents thought the show was awful. Or, if you have a few free hours check out another GAA site, gaaboard.com where they have a television review thread on the show that goes on for almost 30 pages.

Most of the commentary is again negative and that's a real pity. Celebrations are after all meant to be fun.

http://www.advertiser.ie/galway/article/7163

[Main Street]

Deja vu Gnevin,
beaten to the line by a Meathman.

http://gaaboard.com/board/index.php?topic=10734.msg454198#msg454198

[turk]

I thought the real gobshite was that Knob from Nob Nation

I agree with Fearon!! This guy was a wodious pr1ck!

[Zulu]

Deja vu Gnevin,
beaten to the line by a Meathman.

http://gaaboard.com/board/index.php?topic=10734.msg454198#msg454198

Meathman? That's news to me, I'm sure I've been called worse I just can't remember when.

[Eoghan Mag]

I tuned in to watch this show for an entirely different reason than a lot of folks on here. I wanted to see the performance by The Saw Doctors. For all the knowledge of GAA affairs abounding on this website it seems many are unaware of the GAA links that some of the musical guests have.

One of the founder members of The Saw Doctors, Leo Moran has won a Junior C Galway County championship medal with Tuam Stars. The Saw Doctors sponsor one of the Tuam Stars' underage girls football teams. The Saw Doctors is written across the front of their jerseys when they play.

Leo Moran can also lay claim to being one of the first paid professional GAA players in Ireland. After he qualified to become a secondary school teacher he decided not to take up that role and instead took part in a FAS arts project which lead to the formation of Macnas. During half time in the 1987 Connaught Senior football final he was paid by the GAA as captain of the Macnas 'Mayo football side' against a 'Galway side.' 'Mayo' won the farcical match and Tuam man Leo stopped a point by standing on the shoulders of two of his team mates! In the real final Galway triumphed so he came out happy on all fronts.   

A CD album by a band called The Folk Footballers entitled The First Fifteen was released in 2001 to celebrate Galway footballers becoming All Ireland Champions. The musicians included now retired (as a Saw Doctor) Padraig Stevens (he was responsible for the lyric that rhymed ass with mass in the hit song I Useta Lover) and Leo Moran. The 15 songs on the album are all GAA football themed numbers. In addition The Saw Doctors have written such tunes as Small Ball which is about hurling, and Broke My Heart that deals with how losing a GAA football match can break a young lad's heart. On The Saw Doctors current album Live At The Melody Tent there is a fine song called Out For A Smoke which shows concern for modern Ireland and the changes taking place. It has the wonderful lines: 'With the evenings getting shorter, I wonder can we forge another dream, Gather up the pieces and assemble another winning team.'

Incidentally the first member of the current line-up of The Saw Doctors to play in Croke Park was an Englishman. At the time however Anthony Thistletwaite was a member of The Waterboys when they played support to U2.

Brush Shiels has an album named Fields of Athenry and one of the backing singers on this album is one Mr Sean Boylan who was Meath manager at the time. In the sleeve notes he gives special thanks to: 'Sean Boylan the herbalist from Dunboyne for putting my body back in tune with my spirit and introducing me to the beauty of herbs.' Anyone who knows anything about the Irish music scene will be aware of the form of Brush Shiels in that he taught Phil Lynott to play bass guitar and then he sacked Philo from his band Skid Row!

This is not the only website to slate this show. On foot.ie, a soccer website, there is a thread running dealing with this broadcast. Some posts in that discussion are somewhat anti-GAA in nature but overall like here it is the general handling of the subject in question that prompts most outrage. A show has to be really bad to promote this amount of debate. 

I tried to join this forum about two weeks ago and it is only today that I've got an email to allow me log in. Is there a reason for this delay or is this forum not very welcoming to new members?

[INDIANA]

The fact that you cannot see that the Fields of Athenry is totally and utterly inappropriate for a Gaa show, means you must haven't a notion what The Gaa is or what it represents. i rest my case.

[Eoghan Mag]

It was not a GAA show - it was the Late Late Show. If you want to explain to me in detail why a song that was deemed good enough for the Meath manager to sing along to on an album is not now good enough for you I'm willing to read said explaination. I don't see what is wrong in any way with the song.

[pintsofguinness]

I tried to join this forum about two weeks ago and it is only today that I've got an email to allow me log in. Is there a reason for this delay or is this forum not very welcoming to new members?

Aye it's a big conspiracy.   


I think everyone knows the Saw Doctors are GAA men but are you trying to suggest that yon other eejit has a right to be on a gaa show because sean boylan was a backing singer? 

It was not a GAA show - it was the Late Late Show. If you want to explain to me in detail why a song that was deemed good enough for the Meath manager to sing along to on an album is not now good enough for you I'm willing to read said explaination. I don't see what is wrong in any way with the song.

No one is saying there is anything wrong with the FOA.