He called Ronaldo a cod, berated a journalist for running off with ‘a young one’ and attended John Delaney’s 50th birthday bash. But what is Eamon Dunphy’s biggest regret?
On the week the United States dropped the atomic bomb, Eamon Dunphy dropped into planet earth. It is hard to know which of the two was more explosive. The man who turns 80 tomorrow has had his fair share of controversies over the years. And he isn’t afraid to admit to his mistakes.
Like there was the time he described Cristiano Ronaldo as a ‘cod’ live on air prior to a Champions League match. By full-time, Ronaldo had scored a hat-trick; he has since won five Ballon D’Ors, four European Golden Shoes, five Champions Leagues, seven league titles, scoring 800 goals in 1,062 matches.
Fair to say then, it wasn’t one of The Dunph’s better predictions.
“No,” he agrees, laughing. “In fact that was one of the greatest mistakes of all time and there is a mural up in Phibsboro that shows me delivering those silly words.
“When my criticism was at its most savage, he was 21. He had just gone to United. He was a diver. He threw his hands up in the air. He feigned injury. Those behaviours were not the hallmark of a great player.
“But he became a phenomenon, the likes of which we had never seen.
“Back then, you were sitting in a television studio; You had your doubts about this guy; you don’t go along with the crowd. So what are you to do?
“I think you should express yourself so that everyone knows where you stand.
“If you are wrong, and in this case, I was grotesquely wrong, then you accept the stick. But that is the way the job should be done. Punditry is about expressing yourself. Roy Keane is a good rather than great pundit.”
THE MAN ‘WHO RAN OFF WITH A YOUNG ONE’
Yet there was a time when Dunphy was a staunch defender of Keane’s, especially in the aftermath of Saipan, when Ireland split into Keane and McCarthy camps.
Three years later came another split, Keane leaving Manchester United following a fall-out with Alex Ferguson. Cue debate on RTE, with Bill O’Herlihy, the anchor, referring to an article written for The Sunday Times by a journalist called Rod Liddle.
Frustrated by O’Herlihy’s line of questioning, and by a perception that Keane was being patronised, Dunphy leapt to his defence, describing Keane as ‘a family man’.
Yet he didn’t stop there. “I will tell you who wrote that article about Roy. It was a man called Rod Liddle. He is the guy that left his wife and ran off with a young one.”
Twenty years on, it remains Dunphy’s most popular quote when Googled. Yet he deeply regrets saying it.
Dunphy says: “It was a horrendous thing to say [live on air]. That was insane. And we wondered what it would cost us in libel.”
Which was?
“Nothing.”
“But even so, it was still a desperate thing to say.
“I apologised to Rod on Liveline. He accepted my apology.
“I was mortified at myself.
“I spoke to him in the not too distant past. He said ‘by the way that young one I ran off with, I married her and we are still together’.
“That was a sacking offence but I wasn’t sacked.”
It isn’t his only regret.
NOT BEING PART OF JACKIE’S ARMY
A more personal one came during Italia 90 when Dunphy went against the grain and criticised the Irish team following a poor display against Egypt, dropping his pen at the end of a statement he made.
All hell broke loose. An opinion poll in the following day’s Evening Herald revealed that 98 per cent of those polled believed he should be sacked.
He wasn’t. But the kickback hurt those closest to him, his children and parents.
Dunphy says: “That particular game was very poor. I had a right go at him and the team. I had a pen in my hand. I just dropped it.
“It was a big fuss over very little. In hindsight the people I feel sorriest for were my children and parents. They didn’t like the attention.
“Growing up, we were an ordinary family and here was this loudmouth going around Ireland writing incendiary stuff about Jack Charlton, John Hume and Mary Robinson; God’s gifts to the nation.
“My family did not want their son to be propelled into that kind of limelight. That would be a big regret.”
GOING TO WAR WITH THE FAI
Another came when he cosied up to John Delaney, the disgraced former chief executive of the FAI whose appalling leadership of the football association was exposed by The Sunday Times in 2019. Dunphy had even attended Delaney’s 50th birthday party.
“I do regret getting sucked into that. He was getting me tickets for matches. It was regrettable, it was wrong, it was lazy. And I deserved no respect for that.
“But I wasn’t trying to hide it. I declared myself to be the recipient of tickets from him and took a sympathetic view of him.
“That was part of his con. And he got me for a while.
“Definitely Delaney fooled me. I was foolish. And I got sucked into a relationship where I could ring him up and say, ‘could I have two tickets for a Manchester United match?’
“When the story broke about what he was doing, I was appalled. I did out myself. No one said ‘We have caught you!”
“I said, ‘This is wrong’, I have got to out myself because if someone else was doing it, I would have been after them. Attending his 50th birthday party is a source of embarrassment. I did go. It was embarrassing, deeply embarrassing.”
Ever since he has been a stringent critic of the FAI, although he was much softer on Stephen Kenny than on previous Ireland managers, even though Ireland’s results were poor. “The game has a lot more to it than the manager,” he says. “You also need the players.”
Kenny’s replacement, Heimir Hallgrimsson, has been more roundly criticised. But Dunphy says: “My opinion of him has changed for the better.
“It does not mean I have been convinced by him.
“The whole process of hiring Heimir was flawed. The FAI didn’t do their homework. They produced him out of a hat and told the Irish public, ‘Here you go, you have a new man from Iceland’.
“It was not the right way to do it.
“And his start was not very good – however in the last couple of games, the Irish team has played with a shape, a consistency and is looking a bit better. He has to be credited for that change. I would not replace him [right now] but at the same time, I would not recommend the method used to appoint him.
“It remains to be seen if he will work out. The jury is out … as it is with every manager.
“As it is, indeed, with every pundit!”
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