Among the most vociferous defenders of Jim Gavin amid the curious controversy that flamed up after the All-Ireland final was Luke Fitzgerald, who eventually snapped and ended up in a Twitter Spat™ with Sunday Independent journalist Paul Kimmage. They eventually decided to debate the issue at more length, so both men sat down for Fitzgerald's Left Wing podcast.
It's fair to say that Kimmage didn't arrive to play games - he showed up with a copy of Rough Ride, three ring-binders, a newspaper, a notebook, and two stacks of papers. Ultimately, it proved to be a fairly difficult listen, with Fitzgerald foundering in the face of Kimmage's arguments.
Donncha O'Callaghan is writing about that debate in his column in today's Times, using Kimmage/Fitzgerald and Reggie Corrigan's tense and terse post-match interview with Peter O'Mahony as reference for a wider piece about the nature of former pros landing prominent roles in the media toward the end of their careers.
It's really excellent, and it can be read here.
Among the highlights is O'Callaghan's summing up of the Kimmage/Fitzgerald debate. O'Callaghan admits that Kimmage won, in what was a pretty poorly matched debate:
While listening I could not shake the image of Luke as a man who had gone into a fishing shop to buy a novice’s rod — and then set off in a punt to catch Moby Dick.
Kimmage is one of the big fish in the media habitat for well-established reasons. If you’re going to debate against him then you have to make sure you’re at least as well researched as he’s going to be, and that you’re satisfied there is a consistency and sound rationale to your position.
Even then, you are going to be peddling uphill and against the wind in a mental battle with a journalist of close to 30 years’ experience. At times it was about as pretty as if you’d thrown Kimmage the No 11 Leinster jersey and told him to pivot his way through the Montpellier defence.
The full column is available here.
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