How would you decide on Ireland’s greatest sporting moment? With some difficulty, I suspect. And that’s the task RTÉ has set itself with a new series to pick the one sporting moment that has moved the nation more than any other. What is certain is that not everyone will agree.
It’s not the greatest sporting achievement, which would be even more difficult to decide because it’s almost impossible to compare one sport with another. Especially when comparing team and individual sports.
It is also limited to the first 50 years of RTÉ television, the five decades beginning in the 1960s, which probably eliminates a few contenders, maybe making the task a little easier.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently after being asked onto the panel for Thursday’s first show. It will discuss a shortlist of just five sporting moments from the 1980s, and I will be in the company of Eamon Dunphy and Joe Brolly, so I’m looking forward to that.
During each show viewers get to vote on their preferred moment by text and across a number of social media channels, although I suspect some people will feel their personal favourite didn’t even make the cut. There are also a few controversial moments to shift through. Still, when you think back on the history of sport in Ireland over the past 50 years there have been many great moments which got us up off our seats and shouting, either in the stands or in front of the TV. Moments that often do move the entire nation, especially when we feel a little down and suddenly get that spring back in our step.
But how do you decide on the greatest sporting moment of them all? Almost impossible, you would think, but at least helped by some discussion and input from everyone that was moved and inspired in their own way.
The answer you get will nearly always be different depending on the age of the person, where they come from, what sport they may have played.
Some people will have lived through all the decades, and therefore able to weigh up the winners in each decade and recall how it affected the nation as a whole.
But they aren’t always the events that made it onto the front pages of the paper or the headline story on the news. It could be a moment which inspired and influenced the path you took in life. I was greatly influenced by the success of Irish athletes throughout the 1980s. This was when I was still attending school in Cobh, and just beginning to get a few opportunities to run for Ireland on schools and junior teams. And just beginning to dream and maybe one day I would go to the Olympics, take on the world.
We were spoilt with success in Irish athletics throughout the 1980s. Eamonn Coghlan winning the 5,000m at the 1983 World Championships in Helsinki; John Treacy winning the silver medal in the Olympic marathon in LA a year later. Both of which are on the long list for the greatest sporting moment of the 1980s.
One thing that stands out is the fact that so few women were among those great sporting moments
There were also the two gold medals won at the 1987 World Indoors in Indianapolis; Marcus O’Sullivan in the 1,500m, and Frank O’Mara in the 3,000m, where Paul Donovan won a silver. That’s still the most successful Irish athletics team of all time.
Even before that Treacy had inspired a country that has always loved distance running by winning back-to-back World Cross-Country titles in 1978 and 1979.
Thinking back now, one thing that stands out is the fact that so few women were among those great sporting moments, certainly compared to what is being achieved these days. That never really mattered to me as long as I had my athletics heroes. And in my mind I knew if they could do it then so could I.
At a more local level, in Cobh there was the soccer team Cobh Ramblers, who in 1983 had an epic battle with Sligo Rovers in the FAI Cup semi-final. Cobh were a non-league team at the time, and I remember it took four games, back and forth between Flower Lodge in Cork and the Showgrounds in Sligo, before Sligo clinched it. The whole town of Cobh was engrossed. As the replays continued, the whole country started to become intrigued, not just the people of Cobh and Sligo. This is also what helped attract Roy Keane to sign up with Cobh Ramblers in the infancy of his career.
It’s also one of the things that I always felt I had in my corner, the support from the town of Cobh behind me every step of the way. This is the sort of positive energy that can lift sports people, knowing they’re not alone, and it matters as much at local level as it does at national level. Great sporting moments don’t necessarily have to be global or feel like they move the entire country.
It also helps to have lived through the moment, remembering where you were, or how you felt inspired. It’s not quite the same when the moment is just replayed even if it is still appreciated down through the years.
For me it’s all about being in the moment. On Sunday I was back home in Cobh, and caught the end of the FAI Cup final between Cork City and Dundalk. It went into extra-time, both teams tense, before Dundalk scored first, still with 20 minutes of play remaining.
A moment like that may not move a nation, but it can inspire many junior players into believing they can also succeed at the highest level
I had to head off in the car, and continued to listen on the radio, before, in the dying moments, Cork City were level again. And with that it went to penalties, and suddenly it felt like one of those moments that stops you in your tracks, stops the nation.
Only I was still moving, still drawn into the moment, when it felt like most people in Cork must have been on the edge of their seats as the penalty shootout began. And suddenly Cork City were champions.
Later I found out the Cork women’s team had earlier won the women’s FAI Cup for the first time. A moment like that may not move a nation, but it can inspire many junior players into believing they can also succeed at the highest level. I will always feel more moved and inspired by the moments I got to witness or at least watched live on TV. This week we also saw the Melbourne Cup produce another great sporting moment for Ireland with the top three horses all of Irish extraction, the winner Rekindling, trained by Joseph O’Brien, just edging out his father Aidan’s horse Johannes Vermeer.
This is officially known as the race that stops a nation, and I know from being in Melbourne in past years that everything does stop, including the schools.
Only waking up to the news wasn’t quite as exciting as watching it live – the pity being this was the one year I happened to be on the other side of the world.
It won’t be an easy task deciding on Ireland’s greatest sporting moment. Then think about the next 50 years as we continue to succeed in sports that didn’t even exist before. Now that will be an impossible task.
