Croke Park's first radio broadcast commemorated

By Cian Murphy

Uachtarán CLG Jarlath Burns has today unveiled a plaque to mark the centenary of the first ever radio broadcast at Croke Park - an event which is part of sports broadcasting history.

It was at the All-Ireland hurling semi-finals in Croke Park of 100 years ago this weekend, where that history was made. Crackling and humming over the airwaves from 30 miles out from its HQ in Dublin city centre, the 2RN station broadcast the clash between Kilkenny and Galway and was the first of its kind for coverage of a field sport in Europe and the start of an iconic relationship between our national games and our national broadcaster.

It was a pioneering move by 2RN, the fledgling radio station of the then new Irish Free State. Generations before smart phones and text speak were ever thought of, the station name is believed to be a clever play on the line ‘Come Back to Eireann’ from the popular song by Count John McCormack.

Music then was the staple diet of the radio world. Radio Sport began when US networks started with American football games as early as 1912 and by the 1920s baseball games and boxing fights had joined them regularly, with Australia and New Zealand carrying sport from the early 20s too.

In Europe, a boxing match in London was broadcast in 1925 and a thriving radio scene in Spain had its own weekly sports magazine programme.

In Britain, major horse racing results were carried. But there were fears that the new phenomenon of carrying live coverage of sports events would damage attendances at matches. There was also a lobby from the newspaper industry that live radio would damage their sales and circulation. Sports reports were purposely carried late in the evening. The result is that the BBC did not air its first live sports commentaries until the Arsenal v Sheffield United soccer match and England v Wales Five Nations Rugby match in January 1927.

By then 2RN had already planted a flag for the live broadcasting of field sports in Europe by the airing of the concluding stages of the All-Ireland championships.

It began with the 29 August meeting of Kilkenny and Galway, when Patrick D Mehigan took up the invite from station chief PS O’Hegarty, and with the permission of visionary GAA Ard Stiúrthóir Padraig Ó Caoimh, to give continuous commentary on the match into a microphone at Croke Park. Kilkenny edged a dramatic 6-2 to 5-1 clash. To the beaming delight of his technicians, Mehigan’s commentary was successfully carried.

Better known to his friends as Paddy or by his pen names in the Cork Examiner as Carbery or Irish Times as Pat O, Paddy Mehigan was the obvious choice for this groundbreaking assignment, and he would relay 100 commentaries from that point on.

A Cork-born customs officer by trade, he is a giant of Irish sports journalism and likely the first ever full-time Gaelic Games Correspondent. In today’s shrinking media landscape, the GAA Corr post is in danger of becoming a relic of a bygone era.

Carbery however, was its trailblazer. He was initially renowned as a gifted hurler and athlete. Having found himself in London through work in 1902, he was on the London hurling team beaten by Cork in the 1902 All-Ireland final, not played til 1904. When he returned to Ireland and to play with Blackrock, he was on the Cork team that lost the 1905 hurling final to Kilkenny, not played til 1907. According to Seán Kearns in his Dictionary of Irish Biography contribution, Mehigan was hop, skip and jump All-Ireland champion in 1908. His brother, Mick, was an All-Ireland winning captain for Cork in 1911.

His writing was published from 1912 and aside from sport he also wrote poetry and about history and nature and this in time, would lead to his collections published as Carbery’s Annual which was a popular publication printed every year up until his passing in 1965.

He was a key contributor to An Camán, the GAA’s sponsored publication of the 1930s in a decade when with the arrival of the Irish Press in 1931 coverage of Gaelic Games was greatly increased.

As the GAA Championships took on a new level of popularity in the post war years from the mid 20s on, Mehigan and his colleagues captured people’s imaginations with their coverage in print and on air of the great Kerry and Kildare football teams of the 20s and the Limerick, Cork and Kilkenny hurlers of the 1930s. Attendance records at All-Ireland finals smashed through the 40,000 and 50,000 marks within a decade of radio commentaries arriving. By 1936 Croke Park required a redevelopment to cater for crowds, which would lead to the 1937 and 1938 work on a new 20,000 capacity Cusack Stand. The GAA was on its way.

As the Irish Times Correspondent on Gaelic games, Mehigan started a remarkable run of service of more than 30 years with his byline in print for the paper, succeeded eventually by fellow Cork man Paddy Downey who served in the post for 32 years and handed the baton to Dublin's Sean Moran who recently retired after he too, gave 32 years of sterling service to the coverage of Gaelic games in the paper.

Marking the anniversary during the recent 2026 championships, the Irish Times reproduced Mehigan's own recollections on the landmark first broadcast of a century ago.

“I was at Croke Park half an hour before the match when the day came. I was introduced to the engineer-in-chief. I inspected all the contraptions and wires and earphones in the office underneath the Hogan Stand. A cable led up to a corner of the press stand.

“Then a big square mahogany box with wires and screws and gadgets galore was set out and, when the time came, I was asked to sit beside the box. A leather contraption was put around my neck with a yellow brass tube in front into which I was told to speak. It was all new to me; I had no voice test whatsoever. I just had my teams on a slip of paper in my hand.

“The mysterious signal came that I was ‘on the air’ and the engineer nodded at me to ‘fire away.’ Without more ado I ‘fired away’ and found that I could spout freely enough, particularly as soon as the game, which I was so familiar with, started … I got a great kick out of it, and was glad to help spread the light about the loved game of my boyhood," he recalled.

2RN evolved and was replaced by Radio Athlone, named after where its central mast was located, and then, in time, morphed into Radio Éireann in 1960, with Gaelic games always a key part of its offering. An 18-year-old Micheál O’Hehir would do his first game in 1938 and go on to make his own iconic contribution. Seán Ó Ceallaghain and Eamonn de Barra were other commentators who played an important part in the broadcasting of Gaelic games.

The legendary O’Hehir would help popularise the games and its players to new levels and in 1947, he relayed the All-Ireland football final between Cavan and Kerry from the New York Polo Grounds back to Ireland – famously pleading with authorities ‘for a few minutes more’ to ensure the concluding stages of the game were heard in Ireland as they were running over their allotted time and the ‘line’ back to Ireland was in danger of being disconnected.

One September Sunday during the Second World War Bill Doonan, a radio operator in the British Army, was reported missing from his base in Italy. When discovered, he was, reportedly, "in a trance like state" up a tree with his radio, and tuning to the signal from Croke Park on All-Ireland final day. Remarkably, a couple of years later Bill was playing for Cavan in New York as O’Hehir called his part in a famous Breffni triumph.

The mass emigration of the 50s and 60s brought with it an increasing reliance on radio and connection. Older generations recall how they might have heard rumours of a result from Croke Park - but it was only when Sean Ó Ceallacháin (and in subsequent years his son Seán Óg) announced the GAA result on their weekly radio results programme on a Sunday night that a result was considered official. Seán Óg took over from his father in 1948 and gave the results every Sunday up until May 2011 - entering the Guiness World Records for the longest career in radio sports broadcasting.

When Teilifís Éireann arrived in 1962, the Railway Cup inter-provincial finals on St Patrick’s Day were its inaugural GAA broadcast and the GAA has remained at the heart of RTÉ Sport, just as it is a crucial ingredient of the many local radio stations who also provide an incredible service.

In Britain the BBC Radio Times publication produced a special grid of a soccer pitch for listeners ahead of their debut soccer broadcast in January 1927. Divided into 8 squares, listeners could follow the paly by having the area of the action referenced during the commentary. This, it is claimed, is where the phrase 'back to square one' comes from.

Illness denied Micheál O’Hehir the chance to commentate on his 100th All-Ireland final, but his legacy is enshrined in the media centre on Level 7 at Croke Park bearing his name. His mantle was taken up by Micheal Ó Muircheartaigh who proved a worthy successor, bringing his own inimitable style and passion for our games and our culture.

The men behind the microphone since (strangely as yet, there has been no female GAA commentator) from Brian Carthy to Ger Canning, Marty Morrissey and Darragh Maloney and their colleagues through to younger exponents of the craft like Padraig Lodge and Cathal Mullaney, have played their part in keeping the telling of the GAA story colourful and vibrant and above all, relevant in the new world of streaming and multi platforms.

A century on from that first broadcast, the GAA salutes our original Voice of the GAA Paddy Mehigan.