Joe Brolly thinks that his indifference to people's opinions of him is what makes him a good pundit and prepare to take a look at arguably the fastest man in the GAA in Aughrim on Sunday.
Joe Brolly on what makes a good pundit
Love him or hate him, it’s hard to argue that Joe Brolly isn't the most entertaining GAA pundit out there at the moment and, for better or worse, his name alone is a guaranteed conversation starter at the water-cooler for GAA fans of a Monday morning.
In his most recent column in
Gaelic Life, Brolly put forth his thoughts on what he thinks makes a good pundit and much like the characters in another RTE offering that goes out on Sunday nights, Brolly is not bothered about whether people Love/Hate what he has to say as long as he is being honest in how he says it.
"The whole point of sports punditry - if it has any point at all - is to express an honest view, and let the dice fall where they may," Brolly writes.
"The trick is to be interesting and at the same time entertaining. In essence, the viewer has to rise to your personality. Whether they like or hate it is irrelevant.
"As Kilkenny's Eddie Brennan said to me shortly after he joined the RTE panel last year, 'I've always admire the way you don't mind being hated'”.
Like Pat Spillane, who once told the story of how a letter addressed only with the words ‘Pat Bollocks, Kerry, Ireland’ made its way to his house, Brolly has received his fair share of angry mail for his controversial views, but as he illustrates in the example below, it’s nothing he can’t handle.
"Last year I received one from Mayo finishing with the immortal line, 'It is just a pity that before the ceasefire, you were not put against a wall and shot', Brolly writes.
"If he had included his address I would have replied, 'If the firing squad are to hit the target, make sure none of them are from Mayo'."
Zing.
Hat-tip to The Hogan Stand for the quotes
Meath’s answer to Usain Bolt
Meath will be looking to get out of the blocks quickly in their first Leinster Championship outing of the season against Wicklow this weekend and with that in mind, they couldn’t have picked a more suitable man at corner forward than Eamon Wallace, who will be making his Championship debut on Sunday.
Zippy corner forwards in the GAA aren’t exactly a new phenomenon, but they won’t come much zippier than Wallace, who is the Irish under-19 200 Metre champion and is pretty quick over 100M and 400M too.
A quick trawl of a few newspaper reports and internet forums suggests that Wallace has run the 100 metres in under 11 seconds, the 200 in under 23 seconds and the 400 in under 50 seconds, worrying enough statistics for whoever has the job of marking him on Sunday.
Yeah, but can he kick a feckin’ point? Well he looked pretty nifty during the Division Three league final at Croke Park earlier in the year so we’ll see on Sunday if he can translate that form to Championship before he goes back to beating the rest of the Meath lads in the sprints at training next week.
