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SOMETIMES there is someone who is on our TV screen that seems to be part of the family.
We enjoy his banter and opinions, we love his laugh, we love his catchphrase and we never turn the channel when his face is on.
This person for me was Bill O’Herlihy. Bill was like the manager in your favourite restaurant, the pilot on your flight to start your holidays, your favourite teacher, the guard who says you were only just over the speed limit, so you are good to go.
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He was basically the man that you enjoyed seeing. Football is not a sport that I particularly have a great interest in. I used to, back in the nineties and noughties when Manchester United were Kings and of course when every house in Ireland had an Italia 90 tea towel or mug.
We all knew someone who travelled to the big games. I was extra lucky as my big sister lived there so I lived the dream. Italia 90 was when I really took notice of Bill and his reaction in studio to goals or lack of, formed the basis of my opinion that I had no problem giving to anyone who would listen.
Bill was one of us. He didn’t really know a lot about the sport but he threw in the odd knowledgeable phrase that made him look good.
I copied his phrases on many an occasion. RTE was very lucky to have a man chair the panel as good as Bill. Even if you had very little interest in football, you couldn’t but get engrossed with the banter and the arguments between Giles and Dunphy with Bill stirring the pot.
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He was a genius at stirring that pot.
He was always very good at reading a mood and guiding the conversations away from all out war. I remember him particularly having to do this during the debacle of Saipan. Giles and Dunphy were out for each other’s blood and Bill had to take the role of Kofi Annan to bring peace to the camp in Montrose.
“Okey dokey” and “so we’ll leave it there so” will always and ever be synonymous with Bill O’Herlihy.
George Hook paid a lovely tribute to Bill in his father’s words “any eejit can try and look smart, but it takes a very smart man to look like an eejit”.
This is what we liked about Bill, he didn’t claim to know a hell of a lot about football and he asked the questions in layman’s terms. There were no complicated manoeuvres on the pitch spoke of, they were always told by Bill in a language that we understood.
He may have been the sports anchor but he helped us to grow a love for the sport. Ireland needed something back in the late eighties and early nineties and football became that something.
There were fellas selling their cars to stay on in Italy and later in USA 94. There were baby booms after these world cups as everyone was feeling the love. Bill O’Herlihy epitomised this love and he will be sorely missed.
Although he had retired from our screens the fact that he has passed away makes it all so final.
It was great in one sense that he got to leave his job on his own terms and that on the very night that he passed away that he attended the Irish Film and Television Awards as he was such a major part of Irish television.
I think when the Olympics and the World Cup come around again, it is then that we will really miss him, his wit, his generosity, his skill, his professionalism and his ability to ask the questions we wanted to ask.
There will never be another Bill O’Herlihy, he had a unique style, he was one of a kind and a gentleman.
