Media come in for criticism

FORMER CLARE hurling manager Ger Loughnane has strongly criticised some sections of the media for their conduct during his battle with leukaemia.

The television pundit is recovering from treatment and returning to good health, but has been left with “nothing but absolute contempt” for certain journalists after he was requested to do an interview days after he started treatment and was reported to have died last July. “The lowest point of all was when the rumours that I was dead went around. That was the hardest thing to deal with,” said Loughnane. “I had the first phase of chemotherapy just finished and the first phase is very, very difficult.

“I’d lost an awful lot of weight and came out after 32 or 33 days in a room on my own. You’re in an air-filtered room and when you go back outside it’s a big adjustment.”

Having overcome that ordeal, he and his wife Mary then had to calm his distraught son Conor, who rang from Australia upon hearing and reading reports of his father’s death.

“He was saying that I was supposed to be dead, that it was on the (Irish) Examiner website, on Twitter and Facebook and some radio stations were reporting it,” Loughnane told the Star. “He saw it all over the internet and he couldn’t be convinced I wasn’t (dead), even when he was talking to Mary. He thought she was just trying to calm him down.” He added: “I had to ring Conor back to reassure him that everything was fine.”

Loughane described the reports as “completely and utterly irresponsible”, and the 58-year-old was also angered by requests for an interview that came two days after he started treatment.

“I was in James’s (St James’s Hospital) in Dublin and I started the chemo on a Saturday morning. Then, on the Monday, I got a message from an RTÉ reporter looking to do an interview. I didn’t even reply to it.”

The request was then re-routed through a friend. “I was on the chemo for three days, he knew I was on chemo but he wanted to do an interview for his own gratification. Worse still then, he wanted to do an interview at the end of the year. He sent me a text saying he was thinking of me and praying for me, and was there any chance I’d do an interview.

“That’s despicable stuff altogether. It shows the kind of insincerity that is there with a certain section. When you see it as barefaced as that, you have nothing but absolute contempt for the people who are trying to pull that kind of stunt.”

In a detailed interview, the former All Star, who has opted to avail of early retirement from his job as principal of St Aidan’s National School in Shannon, expressed his gratitude for the “tsunami” of support he received from people within the game and members of the public.

“The volume of good wishes overwhelmed me, I just couldn’t believe it.” He does not, however, see his recovery as “heroic”, insisting he had a “fantastic life” and had no “Bucket List”. The way I look at it now is that it is not as traumatic an experience for a person my age as it is for a young person. All I wanted to do was to get back to what I was doing before I got ill. You look at a person who goes in there at a young age and all the hopes and aspirations for life are put on hold . . . It was no heroic thing for me to battle it.”