IT HAS become almost axiomatic that to be prominent on the Sunday Independent means travelling a long way ideologically. And Eamon Dunphy has done just that.
Born into working-class Drumcondra, Dublin, he became a professional footballer with Millwall. He held left-wing views but on his return home, became enamoured Dr Garret FitzGerald's Fine Gael.
His first break in journalism was with The Irish Times. As a sports journalist, he is fresh, intelligent and honest. However, he is also given to vitriolic attacks not just on sports personalities, but on his own colleagues in sports journalism.
He wrote for the original Sunday Tribune and remained with the newspaper when it was re-established by Vincent Browne. The two fell out and Dunphy went to the Sunday Independent on a salary rumoured to be about £70,000.
The Sunday Independent's system of star columnists suited Dunphy. He could make public his political shifts; at one minute be in love with major figures, such as Dick Spring or Charles Haughey or John Hume, and late? scorn them.
For the Sunday Independent he has been a jewel. Dunphy is undoubtedly popular - even when he criticised Jack Charlton sports fans still read him.
Evidently, he has become uneasy in recent times with the style of journalism pursued by the Sunday Independent. On radio, after journalist Veronica Guerin was murdered, he vowed never again to write the pieces he was known for: Journalism should be investigative, he said.
Recently he has fallen out with Anne Harris, deputy editor at the paper. Media circles have been rife with rumour of his departure, even before he criticised Ms Harris in the Sunday Tribune.
He has now joined Radio Ireland, though he remains a Sunday Independent columnist. He is believed to be getting more than £100,000 a year for his daily evening programme The Last Word and as a sports commentator.
At the Radio Ireland opening he promised his show would "take no prisoners" - one promise that will almost certainly be fulfilled.