To mark the 40th anniversary of the release of his seminal Only A Game?, Eamon Dunphy has conducted a huge, 5,000-word interview with Kieran Shannon in the Irish Examiner. It is an illuminating interview, in which Dunphy recalls the book and touches on myriad other subjects.
Dunphy was at his entertaining best when talking about other pundits. He had his usual pop at Thierry Henry, but also criticised fellow RTE pundit Joe Brolly:
Kieran Shannon (KS): What do you make of Joe Brolly?
Eamon Dunphy (ED): I think he acts the bollix.
KS: That he's overdoing it?
ED: Yeah. I don't listen to him now.
KS: But you must have liked or rated him at some point?
ED: What he did with his kidney, I have huge respect for that and admire the man. But you see, when you're in the public eye...Joe is playing up to it.
Elsewhere in the interview, Dunphy continued his highly entertaining crusade against Thierry Henry. At the Irish Sports awards last month, Dunphy said that "Thierry Henry is on two million a year... for talking shite". Dunphy fired another broadside at Henry in this interview:
ED: We're up against ITV, Sky, BBC. We batter them. That's our result.
KS: Do you still think it's far more insightful than the rest?
ED:Ah, it's different class. I'm watching BT; Jesus! Jamie Carragher, Gary Neville, they brought something to punditry in England. Souness is excellent. But Thierry Henry and Niall Quinn? For fuck's sake! And you can quote me on that. Thierry Henry is there on £2 million a year, just sitting there as a tailor's dummy.
A tailor's dummy. Fantastic. Elsewhere in the interview, Dunphy confirmed that he does not come out with these one-liners purely to be featured on this site:
KS: Do you ever think 'If I say this here, the likes of balls.ie will pick it up, Twitter will love it'?
ED: No. It just comes out. It just comes out!
We recommend you read the full on the Examiner website, here.
