Eamon's happy on the outside, baby!

Eamon Dunphy’s in fine form on Monday morning when The Celt calls. The O’Neill-Keane appointment has given the country, Eamo among them, a much-needed boost. His book, The Rocky Road, is going well, he says, personally he’s in good health and the 68-year-old professes to be “extremely lucky and happy” in his personal life.
The box office polemicist makes his debut in the county on Thursday, November 28, when he launches the first part of his autobiography in the Johnston Central Library - the second’s working title is ‘Wrong About Everything’.
Why write the book? “I thought it would be an interesting exercise. I suppose when you’re younger you are always looking forward, all the time looking forward, and when you move on in life, get a little older, you look back, so it’s an assessment of sorts, putting everything in perspective, trying to understand life, and I thought my story would be an interesting one — I’ve had an unusual life,” he says with that familiar Dunphy laugh-cum-cackle.
“I couldn’t get the story all into one so there’ll have to be two, this is volume one.”
The Celt was supposed to interview the Dublin native on the previous Friday but were informed by his publicist that the Limerick launch celebrations on the Thursday night before went well into the night.
“They had me singing, for God’s sake,” he explains.
What comes across in the book is his feet in both GAA and soccer camps — his parents were “blow-ins” from Limerick and Kilkenny but there is a clear urban and rural divide that his family straddle. On one side; the Dubs, soccer, tinned foods, sprawl; on the other; the culchies, the domineering GAA, “the bastard in the Archbishop’s palace, John Charles MacQuaid” and more.
“I lived in west Cork for two years, really beautiful, my mother is from Limerick, father Kilkenny, but I’ve never been to Cavan,” he says of his inner culchie.
“I love rural Ireland though, just beautiful, even down in Limerick [at the launch] we got 200 people in, exchanged stories into the night, it was wonderful. We had a sing-song, things are unique down the country, but I love it, I’ve been travelling all over with the launches and I love it.”
The closest he’s come to the Drumlin county is a writing retreat in Monaghan but he assures us he’s “really, really looking forward” to the Cavan leg of the touring launch hoolie.

Bookish
Dunphy’s childhood makes up a large portion of the book itself. It’s a shy Eamon, introspective, almost overly bookish that we see, open to the accusation of near-nerdliness — counter-intuitive to the streetwise Northsider we think we know.
“Growing up in Drumcondra, which was a nice part of the city, to be fair, was fascinating to me. We were blow-ins, I’m a first generation Dub. A lot of people around my age would be. My parents moved into the city for work, the Northside was where they could afford, it was cheaper but I had feet in both camps.
“Growing up, sport meant everything, everyone, at some level engaged with sport, the great opiate, but I was a reader as well.”
He learned to read, like so many journalists did, by reading his father’s paper.
“Every day, from back to front, sports to politics, I didn’t really grasp the machinations of politics immediately but I could read before I went to school. So there was that, football and the library.”

Emigrated
If romantic Ireland is dead and gone, his lamentation on where portions of the country are going as a society is brimstone damning, a description he might not appreciate.
“In west Cork, for example, if you were a young man growing up, in your twenties, all the women were gone. It was a horrible situation, emigration took them. So they’d just have to get outta their heads on drink to cope. Just horrible.
“I’ve two cousins, between them they have three of their children in Australia and they won’t be coming home any time soon. It might happen differently in Cavan, whole football teams emigrating, but in Dublin, you could walk around all day and not meet people whose sons or daughters have emigrated — or they just won’t talk about it.
“You can see it now, people emigrating, without work, people take a look at this country and can’t handle it and they get out of their heads to deal with it,” he says, fleshing out a question on his own dalliances with the dark side. How to fix it, though? “I don’t know, beyond building a better, more just society, the Celtic Tiger appeared to offer work and money but now we must be one of the worst countries in the civilised world.”

Dangerous
It’s hit his own trade hard as well, he points out.
“If you look at what’s happening in print journalism, people are really worried, in radio they’re worried, but this affects public discourse, not really me personally, a free press and without that if the direction we’re going in continues and it’s done wrong it could be very dangerous.”
There’s a sensitivity to the man himself that comes across in his book that might not be immediately apparent from his public persona. Do his critics ever get to him?
“Some criticism can wound you, yeah. It depends on where it’s coming from, if it was coming from someone you respected it can cut, yeah. But if it’s the red tops, none of that bothers me, that stuff is water off a duck’s back. People are entitled to have their opinion of course, so am I, I’m a passionate person but I was presenting [the radio show] The Last Word and editing it and wanted longer discourse. Not this arm-wrestling, barking, Vincent Browne stuff — that stuff is more heat than light.
“But I might be wrong... the working title on the second volume is Wrong About Everything.”

Rant
What about the rub he gets from the Aprés Match skits, which frequently parody him as a preening egomaniac.
“I love them, they’re great, really love them. John [Giles] doesn’t like them, actually, but I do.”
There are plenty of rants online to choose from: “I’ve gone on a few alright.”
The famous anti-Venables ‘rant’ crops up, where Dunphy used RTÉ studios to “shoot down” a “kite” being flown by those in the know that Ireland were getting Terry Venables as manager.
Dunphy famously “did his homework” and was white hot on the night making his case against Venables.
“We might have been better off,” he accepts. “Then Trapattoni came — just awful stuff — but then again I thought Bertie Ahern was great, Charlie McCreevy the same thing.”
In light of the recent scrummage surrounding Roy Keane, at what point does he become aware of the line between analysis and showbiz?
“Well, of course, it’s entertainment, but I don’t think you have to be po-faced about serious analysis. I wouldn’t take myself too seriously, though, but I enjoy the job.”

Natural fit
Is he a journalist who happened to play professional football, as the book sometimes reads?
“I think of myself as a footballer who became a journalist but I managed to be a better journalist than footballer. I was a modest footballer, to be honest, but journalism was a natural fit for me in that I’ve always been a bit of an outsider who isn’t too keen on powerful people... that and I can write and I’ve worked hard on improving my writing.”
He’s temporarily ruling out a return to radio — “I’ve fallen out with too many station owners but I enjoy the work with Bill, Liam and John and the book gives me another avenue outside of that, an alternative to journalism.”
There are no plans to retire either, even if co-conspirator Bill O’Herlihy (“simply a master”) has decided his last “okey doke” will be after next year in Brazil.
“I think retirement suits some people, it depends on your disposition, it wouldn’t suit me, for example. I don’t play golf.
“I’m financially secure, I work because I enjoy it, I don’t want to get too cosy.
“I feel good, health-wise, I’ve been up at 5am to write the book, research, check facts, for three years so I’m not thinking of retiring.”

Football’s death
Dunphy in print and on-screen has forever extolled those whose football was learned in the streets. How are we going to replace these players, asks The Celt?
“We’re not. The sport will die. We’re not playing in the streets. That will kill the game, eventually. Even in Brazil. The prosperity of the western world will eventually kill the game off.
“Look at Argentina, beyond Messi and Tevez, you can see it. Franck Ribery is another one but after that the sport will die. I’ve a nephew who plays with a club and what does he want for Christmas? An X-box,” he despairs.
“Look at England and the culture shift, Scotland hasn’t produced a great player in 30 years, not since Dalglish, Souness — there’s been a huge culture shift away from street football.”

Thrilled
If that future is a bleak premonition he’s happier about our immediate future under Martin O’Neill and Roy Keane.
“I’m delighted, thrilled with Martin O’Neill in particular. The Keane appointment has the potential to be anything, in either direction. But it’s looking good with 24 teams going to the Euros and us seeded second, it’s looking good for us,” he says.
Time’s up. He’s off for a Dublin lunch with Love/Hate writer Stuart Carolan, but it’s not for a project, he says, just a friendly lunch. Shame. The prospect of his ‘decent skinsmanship’ outlook, as Aprés Match might say, colliding with the creator of the crime juggernaut whets the appetite.
Love him or hate him, the man’s box office, baby!

Eamon Dunphy launches The Rocky Road in Johnston Central Library, organised by Crannog Bookshop on Thursday, November 28, at 7pm.
Admission is free, but booking is essential and tickets are from Crannog Bookshop.