JOHN Giles is retiring from football punditry at the age of 84 after a 23-year run with Newstalk’s Off the Ball radio programme.
“Thursday night football with John Giles” has been a staple of the evening sports show since the station’s inception in 2002.
Giles was RTE’s ‘senior analyst’ throughout a golden period of football analysis[/caption]
Giles, Dunphy and Liam Brady were affectionately know as ‘The three amigos’[/caption]
This evening it was announced that the Leeds United great has chosen to blow the final whistle on his long and distinguished media career.
His final appearance was preceded by a touching and poignant tribute featuring the best bits of his broadcasting career, both in RTE and Off The Ball.
He goes down as one of the most influential man in the history of Irish football with a career spanning almost 70 years – both on and off the pitch.
And speaking on OTB for the final time, Giles said: “I was really lucky. I fell into the television. Eamon [Dunphy] helped me a lot in that.
“When you’re doing the job I was trying to do, you have to watch all the matches. You can’t make it up as you go along.
“I think it got to the stage where I was getting a bit stale trying to watch as many matches as I could and it became hard work.
“Football has never been hard work to me, I have always loved it but there are so matches.
“Even in the summer now, you see the teams over in America [for the Club World Cup].
“I have had a good run of it. I am 84, nearly 85.
“I have enjoyed it. I loved playing. I fell into to the television, I had no intention of doing that when I was actually playing the football.
“No complaints whatsoever.”
Off the Ball are going to hold a night of celebration in his honour in Dublin’s Sugar Club on Thursday August 14.
To quote the man himself, he’ll be joined onstage by the great and the good of his many friends and colleagues down through the years where they’ll reminisce on all he’s witnessed across his media career.
Those who’d like to attend should keep an eye on Off the Ball’s social media channels as ticket information will be released in due course.
Ger Gilroy, Managing Director of Off The Ball, hailed: “John Giles, Senior Analyst, is a titan of Irish sport.
“His weekly explanation of football truth on Off The Ball helped deepen what the country knows about football.
“His ability to see through bulls*** and his love of the game
shone through in every contribution.
“Off The Ball has been blessed to call John a mentor, colleague and friend for over 20 years, he set the bar for what’s expected every Thursday night and we can only hope to live up to his legacy.
“We have truly been standing on the shoulders of a giant.”
RTE DEPARTURE
The Dubliner departed RTE after Euro 2016 when his contract with the national broadcaster was allowed to run out.
Unlike his exit from Newstalk, it was a somewhat acrimonious parting as Giles told the Irish Sun in 2017.
The former Ireland player-manager stated at the time that he would be open to a return to the RTE panel – if an offer ever came his way.
He said: “I don’t think that’s possible, an offer coming in. If it did, I would consider it, but I wouldn’t be dashing in, strange as that may seem, I don’t miss it.
“I wasn’t disappointed with how it ended with RTE, I had 30 good years at RTE.
“It took them that long to find me out! That was their business to do it, I would have continued but I wasn’t broken-hearted about it, I had a great run.”
Over the course of his stint with RTE he was a quarter of an iconic panel when you lump in host Bill O’Herlihy with “The Three Amigos” of Giles, Eamon Dunphy and Liam Brady.
Giles was an ever-present feature from Ireland’s major tournament breakthrough at Euro 1988 right up until Euro 2016.
That remains the last major international tournament that the Republic of Ireland men’s team have played in.
