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Football's Open University has closed down. John Giles has retired from punditry
Football's Open University has closed down, having taught a Masters course for almost 40 years. On Thursday night, John Giles gave his last lecture as a football pundit, completing his run on Off The Ball, nine years after finishing an iconic run on the RTÉ football panel after Euro 2016. The Ireland and Leeds United great has elected to retire from punditry, aged 84.
Over his time as an educator, he has taught us many important things. He has told us who the great players are and explained what made them great. On every sad occasion one of these greats has left us, it has been a privilege to have an inside man in the pantheon, able to give us the lowdown, speaking as a peer.
John Giles has told us all there is to know about moral courage and honesty of effort. He has assured us, contrary to received wisdom, that there is never a bad time to score a goal. And he has reminded us that the right thing to do at one-nil up is still the right thing to do at one-nil down. And indeed if it is nil-nil. That is what he means by taking each game on its merits.
Over four decades of John Giles punditry, there have been many advances in technology and science and statistics. Indeed John Giles played a part in importing some of those advances by telling RTÉ about the telestrator gadget - or 'scratchpad' - he'd seen on Canadian TV during his spell with Vancouver Whitecaps. So for many years we were blessed to have Gilesy scribbling loosely but authoritatively on a screen and advising people to 'stop it there'.
But even with all those advances and means of evaluating players, there remained no substitute for having John Giles watch a guy for 20 minutes and deliver his assessment. This knack was most valuable during the co-commentary years, when Giles lit up gantries with insight, working alongside George Hamilton.
John Giles with Liam Brady at RTÉ's Euro 2012 launch. Pic: Cathal Noonan, Inpho
In his fine autobiography A Football Man, Giles recalls the simple words of advice given to him by then RTÉ Head of Sport Tim O'Connor. 'Don't talk unless you've got something worthwhile to say. Even if it means nothing is said for five or six minutes of a game.' Another pearl of wisdom seemingly lost in the modern game.
There wasn't initially high hopes for Giles the pundit. His great pal Eamon Dunphy had to twist O'Connor's arm by threatening to bail himself ahead of the 1986 World Cup if Giles wasn't brought on too. Giles the manager had gained a reputation for not having much to say to the media.
Dunphy credits Bill O'Herlihy with some early man-management.
Writing in his memoir The Rocky Road, Dunphy says: 'John was his project for the '86 World Cup Finals. With extraordinary skill, Bill got John talking about the games as if he were sitting in his own front room. The tentative John was but a memory by the tournament's end. He came across as a man of great character and rare intelligence who happened to have been one of football's great players.'
Giles has said he has never felt nervous doing punditry 'I just regard it as talking football, and I am comfortable with that. I didn't fully appreciate at first, that I had already done most of the preparation and training I would need on the football fields of Dublin and Manchester and Leeds and beyond.'
John Giles, left, and Eamon Dunphy at an RTÉ launch in 2007. Pic: David Maher, Sportsfile.
Ger Gilroy, Managing Director of Off The Ball saluted a 23-year stint on the show.
'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 bullshit and his love of the game shone through in every contribution."
That responsibility to the truth was partly a duty to the great players. For as he often put it, "if everybody is great, nobody is great."
