A COUPLE of weeks before the Ulster final I spent a good part of the afternoon outside Niall Morgan’s back at his Cookstown home.
A baking hot sun, a big jug of orange juice, a table, two chairs and a fair degree of trust.
For roughly two hours we chatted about most things. We talked about Niall’s dissertation for his masters on the physical impact lockdown had on primary schoolchildren.
We talked fatherhood and trying to spot Críostai and Maisie in the crowd.
We talked golf handicaps. Well, we talked about Niall’s golf handicap.
Some of the interview went pretty deep too, especially when the Tyrone goalkeeper openly discussed the devastating impact a couple of miscarriages his wife Ciara suffered and finding out they’d lost another child in the week leading up to the 2018 All-Ireland final.
Given the sensitivities of a heart-rendering chapter in their lives, it was only right and proper that the young couple read those passages before the article went to print.
Some of our conversation was off the record – and that’s where it stayed. The vast majority of it was on the record and was presented in a fair and reasonable way.
Niall Morgan is engaging company. In many ways he’s a throwback to the ‘Noughties’ when meaningful access was real.
A time when there was proper enquiry – not the 90 per cent of guff that passes for GAA media discourse these days and which sells the entire Association woefully short.
Back when Tyrone and Armagh dominated the landscape we had two of the most media-friendly outfits in the country. The Tyrone and Armagh players interacted freely with the press and it didn’t stop them from winning big games.
I remember asking Francie Bellew for an interview at Armagh’s All-Ireland final press night in 2003 and like a bashful schoolchild he asked with great sincerity: ‘Why would you want to interview me?’
So, I decided to leave the smiling Crossmaglen man in a quiet corner.
So it’s not every player’s favourite thing to be doing interviews before big games. Some are genuinely shy – like Francie – and others may be superstitious.
There were any number of players during the halcyon days of the 'Noughties' who have since earned a decent living from their on-field success and media friendliness.
It’s great to see those individuals who happily granted interviews and really engaged with the media during their playing days carving out punditry profiles for themselves in the modern game.
Oisin McConville, Brendan Devenney, Aidan O'Rourke and Enda McGinley, to name but a few, learned new skills when tape-recorders were thrust under their chins before and after big Championship games.
Nowadays they are consummate media operators.
And more power to The Irish News for recruiting Stevie McDonnell and Collie Cavanagh as columnists - two men who were always brilliant interviewees.
I remember interviewing former Antrim and Cushendall hurler Shane McNaughton – who is currently tearing it up as an actor in New York – and him mentioning that he enjoyed the discipline of being asked questions by journalists.
It made him think and felt he could learn from the process. It didn’t make him an egotist.
What we have now is a counterfeit process where there is a vice-like grip on media relations within the GAA.
One of the dreariest out-workings of the pandemic has been the emergence of zoom.
Despite the high vaccination rates and the various mitigations that can be put in place, zoom calls look as though they’re here to stay.
So journalists stare blankly into their computer screens and GAA players stare back at them – both parties knowing that all is required are a few decent soundbites and this pained, soul-destroying meeting will be over.
Afterwards, journalists feed off exactly the same quotes and they’re mass produced on social media sites or in the next morning’s newspapers.
It would almost force you to resign from this at-times dreadful, dispiriting profession and take up a cushy PR job.
Anything’s better than another zoom call with the same soundbites, predictable questions, predictable answers.
I would even venture that the process can create a lazy, despondent kind of journalism but where the process is initiated by the GAA, fretting press officers and managers themselves.
There is very little meaningful access any more. Back stories of players will be left untold and, in some instances, a new skill-set is never tested.
And yet, the ironic thing is there are so many players that would happily do sit-down interviews but are prevented from doing so.
It’s the fraudulent, cocooned culture of give-nothing-away, where suspicion is healthy and you throw a blanket over an entire media.
I recall attending one of Tyrone’s All-Ireland final press conferences in Carrickmore where the entire squad milled around the room chatting to press and supporters. And they beat Kerry a couple of weeks later.
The GAA has gotten way too serious for its own good. It was frankly ridiculous of this year’s finalists Mayo to hold their press night with just one player and manager James Horan up for interview.
Isn’t it unfair too that Mayo defender Sean Coen will be plastered all over the local and national media and no other Mayo player? Does the Mayo public not deserve a little more ahead of this final?
Why couldn’t Mayo share the media spotlight and take some of it away from Coen himself?
While no-one was allowed to mention the V-word at Tyrone’s All-Ireland press night in Garvaghey on Tuesday night, at least they put up two more players than Mayo.
But it’s still pretty miserly.
The control freakery within the GAA has got out of hand - and it shows in the dry media discourse of the day.
Niall Morgan aside, of course - a man who's never been afraid to go against the grain - one of the last bastions of meaningful access.
