“You’re labouring the point, Joe.”
What would The Sunday Game – in its current format – do without Colm O’Rourke?
He’s the only one who doesn’t seem to get bogged down (too much) in whether or not a game is enjoyable. He’s the one that tries to analyse the players he’s watching and not arrive with an agenda that he’s going to shove down our throats. He’s the one who keeps Joe Brolly in check.
At least he tries to.
On The GAA Hour podcast this week, the Meath man – the newly-crowned senior football championship winning manager – had a little laugh at the expense of his RTÉ colleague Joe Brolly.
O’Rourke claimed that the Derry native’s principles are “completely movable” and that Brolly is “like the wind”. That raises a whole host of issues because, in the last few years alone, The Sunday Game’s controversial pundit has had a number of campaigns:
- Firstly, he was the first of them to see the logic in Tyrone’s swarming defence.
- Then of course he fell out with Tyrone because he didn’t like their football.
- He was the one who saw the logic in Donegal’s mass defence.
- The of course he fell out with Donegal because he didn’t like their football.
- He lobbied for the black card.
- He has campaigned for a new kickout rule.
- He wants players in certain areas of the field at certain times.
- And he even told us to tell the kids to go play tennis.
So O’Rourke is right in a sense when he’s asked if he’d be interested in the Meath job. How the hell could he take that and leave Brolly to run riot?
“If I went to do that, sure who’d keep manners on Joe Brolly on The Sunday Game?” the Simonstown manager told Colm Parkinson on SportsJOE’s GAA Hour.
“You couldn’t expose the nation to him on his own, could you?”
And where did Brolly’s love affair with Dublin come from? O’Rourke has a simple answer.
“You see, Joe would be like the wind – it changes around very often,” he said.
“It could be Mayo next year, it could be Kerry. Joe will change anyway, we don’t have to worry about him. His principles are completely movable.
“I think everybody wanted Mayo to win. I suppose we were all sort of half Mayo supporters for the championship and we’ll probably continue to be. I do admire their resilience, I don’t know how any man can get up and come back after what they have experienced. They are men of character.”
Listen to the full brilliant interview on The GAA Hour below.
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