Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh's voice a force for good again through 'The Replay'

By John Harrington

If a family member or friend of yours is one of the 64,000 people in Ireland living with Dementia, then you’ll likely appreciate the power of reminiscence.

Many of those afflicted by Dementia can seem agitated, confused, or depressed by their struggle to grasp who and where they are in the now because of short-term memory loss.

But if you can help them connect to a long-term memory then the clouds often part and they’ll suddenly look, and presumably feel, like their old selves again.

That’s the idea behind ‘The Replay’, an initiative launched earlier this week that uses Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh’s iconic GAA commentary to spark memory, connection, and positive emotions through reminiscence therapy.

A collaboration between the GAA, RTÉ, and The Alzheimer Society of Ireland, ‘The Replay’ has brought together a huge audio catalogue of the Kerry native’s evocative commentaries of the All-Ireland Gaelic football and hurling finals from 1985 to 2010.

Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Maynooth University, Richard Roche, is an expert in memory and reminiscence therapy who consulted on ‘The Replay’ initiative, and believes that something that is so instantly recognisable to so many as Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh’s voice can be a really positive resource for those suffering with Dementia

“Memory is a funny thing,” says Professor Roche. “The way memory works in the brain is not exactly how you might think.

“When we think of remembering things it's easy to think of it as watching things on screen, like a sort of mental projector in our heads and we watch it back in front of us. It's not really like that.

“When we remember something all the parts of the brain that were active at the time that memory happened become active again. The places in the brain that represent the sights and sounds and smells and the feelings and emotions, become active again. So, when we remember, in a very real way we re-experience and re-live those events.

“It just takes any one of those sensory channels to reactivate a memory. It could be a smell. The smell of a freshly printed match programme is a very powerful way of transporting you back.

“It could be a sight, like looking out onto a pitch. It could be the sense of being in a place, like returning to Croke Park for a Final.

“And it can also be a sound. We know music is very, very powerful as a way of transporting people back. What happens there is mental time-travel.

“You're transported back to that time and place. You become that person again. And I think this is why Micheál's voice is so pivotal to this project.

“Because when you hear his commentary, when you hear his turns of phrase, his little anecdotes, it's like music. You can see the effect it has when people hear it. They're transported back. They become that person again. Even if they started to lose who that person is in the later stages of dementia.”

Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh’s voice is something that former Kerry midfielder, Jack O’Shea, thinks about a lot because it was such a constant in his life for so long.

Not because commentaries sound-tracked many of O’Shea’s greatest days in the green and gold, but because they were such firm friends who spent so much time together.

They first got to know each other because Ó Muircheartaigh arranged training sessions in UCD for the Kerry footballers based in Dublin, and for many years the two would drive together to matches that O’Shea would play in and Ó Muircheartaigh commentate on.

O’Shea loves the idea that someone as perennially positive as Ó Muircheartaigh could still be a force for good almost two years after his passing through The Replay initiative.

“Micheál was very instrumental to me all through my career,” says O’Shea. “I came to Dublin first when I was 18 years of age and Micheál took me under his wing to train me and I actually trained on him for something like 17-18 years.

“So he was a father figure to me back then and I always felt he was a psychologist because he had the ability to convince you that everything was right, that you were as good in shape as you could be, that there was nothing that could not be achieved.

“I often think about him actually. Even in everyday life if something came up I'd ask myself, 'How would Micheál deal with this?' He had just that way of dealing with everything, nothing was ever a problem.

“He was so calming. I never saw him give out, I never saw him angry, I never heard a bad word coming out of his mouth.

"He was just so positive in every way and he used to always say to me, 'what happened yesterday you can't do nothing about, what's happening today enjoy it, and what's going to happen tomorrow look forward to it.'

“He had that philosophy in life and he was an inspiration. He was a joy to meet, his voice was a joy to listen to, and I'm sure loads of people will benefit from his commentaries through this project. It's great to see that his life and his voice will live on forever."

Throughout his broadcasting career Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh was assisted in his commentary by one his eight children who would sit beside him, keep track of the score and scorers, and alert him to any other helpful and relevant information.

No-one gave a longer service in this role than his youngest daughter Doireann, who was his constant companion at matches for nigh on 20 years.

As well as she knew him and what to expect from him, even she couldn’t help but be amused or bemused at times by the turn of phrase and left-field observations that brought such colour to his commentary.

“You'd be chuckling sometimes thinking, 'where did that come from?'” Ó Muircheartaigh told GAA.ie.

“He might have met someone on the street walking into the match and he'd never necessarily write these things down but he just had an unbelievable memory to remember things and be able to just bring it out when he needed to at the right times. You'd be trying not to laugh sometimes because you don't want to be heard on the microphone.

“On match days Dad would always have a notebook with him and he'd hand-write the teams and the players information on that before each match so he'd have all the information with him.

“What he also had were pages and pages of names and lists of people who would have been passed on a piece of paper to him on the way to the match or the week before who might be listening from abroad or from home or from hospital or anywhere like that.

“Whenever there was a gap or a space between things happening on the pitch he'd flip over the page and go straight to that name and mention all these people who were tuning in from wherever they were.”

Doireann hasn’t been able to bring herself to listen back to her father’s commentaries yet herself because the pain of his passing almost two years ago is still so raw.

But she and the rest of her family are thrilled that his voice is now so easily accessible again and has the power to do so much good for so many.

“It's such an honour," she says. "When they approached us first to ask would the family be interested and would we be happy to do this it was always a no-brainer.

“We were absolutely honoured that they would think of asking us and think of something like this that would be used for such good.

“Mam has her own archive at home, she always used to tape the matches so she has her own collection on tape at home in boxes. To know that they've now been put together in such a professional way with the thought behind it and what it's going to be used for is just brilliant.

“If Dad was here he'd have been all for this himself. He would have been the first man to say, absolutely, do what you need to do, and he would have been delighted it was for such a good cause and that such great use was going to be made of it.

“It's really nice to think that with this project and this resource that he's still going to be talking to people maybe with Alzheimers in need of a lift in some way and transport them back to a special time in their lives.”