by Jimmy Magee
My personal highlight of the Barcelona Games was when I was having my lunch one day in the hotel on my own and I noticed two women sitting near me, who happened to be the only other people in the restaurant. One of the women looked very familiar.
‘I know you,’ I said to her. ‘I think you’re a famous Olympic 100-metre champion.’
‘Yes, but do you know my name?’
‘I knew who you’re not. You’re not Rio Mathias! . . . You’re Wilma Rudolph.’
‘That’s the one.’
It was a nice ice-breaker. We reflected on her life and times. She was one of seventeen children born to a sharecropper in Tennessee. She had polio until she was nearly eleven and it had damaged her leg, but she went on to become an Olympic champion at the 1960 Games in Rome. She became the first American woman to win three gold medals in track and field during a single Summer Olympics and was considered to be the fastest woman in the world during those halcyon days of her fabulous career.
Sadly, she died only two years later, at the age of fifty-four, after battling brain and throat cancer.
Chapter 12
| AN AMERICAN TOUR
Returning to New York, the place of my birth and a city of which I have many warm memories, is always emotional for me. But it was particularly emotional going back there so soon after my mother’s death for the American World Cup in 1994.
I remember wondering, ‘Imagine what she would have thought about me being back here doing the World Cup for television!’ She was funny in her own way. She would tell me that on plane journeys back and forward between New York and Dublin the Aer Lingus steward would say to her, ‘You look familiar. You wouldn’t be related to Jimmy Magee, by any chance?’ I always knew that this was a little fib and that in fact she was probably telling them that she was Jimmy Magee’s mother. I would have been pleased if she did say that, as it showed how proud she was of me.
As I strolled through the streets of New York in 1994 I also thought to myself, ‘Imagine if I had I stayed in New York. What would have happened if my mother and father never went back to Ireland? Would I be covering this World Cup at all? Possibly not. Or would I be doing it for one of the big American television networks and having a limo with a driver of my own, and my own PA? Or would I be driving the bloody car for someone else?’
There was no knowing what I would have been doing. I said to myself, ‘Amn’t I a lucky man to be doing what I wanted to do, and getting paid for it.’
And then my mind wandered back to all those years ago when my children were still young and I was offered a job on a music station in Akron, Ohio, the fifth-largest city in the United States. The offer had come when I had my own show called ‘The Golden Hour with the Millionaires’ (the show that later became ‘The Golden Hour’ with Larry Gogan). It dealt solely with records that sold a million and was on for an hour every night. This executive from the American station was driving through Ireland and heard the show and liked it so much that he made contact with me, saying he had heard I was big into sports, and asking me if I would be interested in going to work for him.
I was torn, but turned it down. I nearly took it, but stupidly I said to myself that I wanted my children to grow up in Ireland. It was as if I thought somebody would chew them up and spit them out in America. I have no regrets about it, but if I knew then what I know now I would have accepted the job. I don’t lose sleep over it, but it was one of those ‘what if?’ moments that crossed my mind during the 1994 World Cup.
The tournament didn’t start promisingly for me. I had one of the scariest experiences in my life. I was in my hotel room, and when I went into the bathroom my nightmare experience began. I always close the door when I visit the bathroom; even if I’m in a room on my own I insist on closing the door. But it was to my own detriment on this occasion.
I shut the door and did whatever I had to do and cleaned up. In a few minutes’ time I was to meet a colleague, Andy McKiernan, down in the lobby to go off to a game together. I went to pull the bathroom door open but it wouldn’t budge.
At first I didn’t panic. I tried it again, and it wouldn’t open. I verified that it was locked and tried opening it and then attempted to pull it again. It wouldn’t open. ‘Janey Mack!’ I muttered.
This was at a time when most people didn’t possess a mobile phone. I frantically looked around to see if there was a phone in the bathroom—as if! I had no way of enlightening anyone about my predicament. Panicking, I began knocking on the walls in the hope that there would be a hotel employee around somewhere.
Minutes passed, and there wasn’t a sign of anybody. I began wondering how long the air would last. All these things were now running through my head. ‘How much air have I left? Will I ever be found?’ The guy waiting downstairs for me would know that I’m always on time, I reassured myself, and he’d be wondering why I wasn’t there and he would come looking for me. After all, in emergencies it’s always best if you try to concentrate on positive thoughts.
If I could only get the door slightly ajar I knew I could get it open. ‘How am I going to do that?’ I mused.
I noticed that there was a little sliver of light creeping into the bathroom through a crack—maybe a quarter of an inch. ‘I’ll get something in there,’ I thought. So I took a facecloth, and it took me ages to get it wedged in underneath. After I had pushed it in there I thought, ‘If I could get another one and put it in it will eventually force the door.’ So I kept doing it, and eventually, after a long struggle, the door popped open. The sweat was pouring out of me after this epic battle with the bathroom door.
When I eventually got down the stairs Andy was laughing when he saw the sweat pouring from me. I said to him, ‘You’re some colleague!’ And I told him what had happened, and he laughed more. He then said that he was wondering where I was because I was always on time. ‘I thought you must have had a bird up in the room!’
‘It’s a good job I hadn’t, because I only had enough air for one!’
——
The tournament could only go one way for me after this—and that was up. The US ’94 World Cup will not go down in the annals of history as being one of the best for presenting quality soccer, but it was one of the most enjoyable for me on a personal and a professional level.
I travelled extensively across the United States to cover games in different groups. The group A opening game, between the United States and Switzerland, was the first World Cup match to take place indoors, played under the roof at the Pontiac Silverdome.
The Colombian defender Andrés Escobar scored an own-goal against the United States, and his side lost 2-1, which resulted in them being placed bottom of the group. It turned out to be the group of death for the footballer nicknamed the ‘Gentleman of Football’, for ten days after his return home he was shot dead outside a bar. He was shot twelve times at close range. It was thought that a drug cartel had had him murdered, in retaliation for the own-goal, which had cost them heavily at the bookies.
The ’94 World Cup will also be sadly remembered for Maradona being unceremoniously booted out of the competition, never to play on the world stage again, after he tested positive for a ‘cocktail of drugs’, including ephedrine, a weight-loss drug. I had a camera crew with me the day he was suspended, and I asked the man who was sending him home, ‘What did he take, or was it a combination of stuff?’ And that’s when the phrase came out, that it was a ‘cocktail of drugs’. I was the person who got the quotation that all the papers went with.
That happened in Dallas, and the next day I had to get an early-morning flight to Washington. After my plane touched down I booked in to the hotel and then went straight out to a pharmacy. I asked for the person in charge, because I felt I had to find out about this drug.
The head man came out, and I asked, ‘Can you tell me what these things are?’
He tried his best to explain that they would help to reduce weight, and about sleep patterns, etc.
‘Would I lose weight if I took
them?’
He looked at me and laughed. ‘Well, you would want to take the whole shop to do it.’
Then I asked him if it would affect performance.
‘No, I can’t see it. Well, it would affect performance all right if you lost weight, but you couldn’t lose weight in a day and then perform better.’
I explained that I was a journalist covering the World Cup and that a man called Maradona (he had never heard of him, making him the best chemist I could have gone to) had been expelled.
I wrote a piece about it and how Maradona could have been just a scapegoat. Now, I’m not saying he didn’t take the stuff, and I’m not suggesting it wasn’t illegal, but I felt that if he was at it then others were probably at it also. But they needed to get a big scalp, and Maradona was the biggest scalp you could get, just as Ben Johnson was in the 1988 Olympics. I do believe Johnson took stuff, but then when he was stripped of his gold medal and everybody behind him was moved up one slot, if you look at their subsequent CVS those athletes were not lily-white at all.
Personally I was disappointed not to have Maradona there on the world stage. At the very least he would have brought some excitement and much-needed skill to the tournament.
After doing the commentary on the opening game in Dallas I went straight onto a flight the next day for San Francisco, and the day after that to Washington for yet another game. It was unbelievable stuff, but I wasn’t the only one doing that type of extensive travelling.
I was delighted to be on the roster for the commentary on the Irish game against the Netherlands in Florida, where my younger sister, Pat, lived. I had been disappointed not to get the Italian match, as it would have been fantastic to cover Ireland playing a game in the city of my birth. Well, the game was technically in New Jersey, a different state but only a stone’s throw from Manhattan. We had a great match in the Giants’ Stadium, and I don’t think anybody will ever forget Ray Houghton’s beautiful chip over the head of the Italian goalkeeper, Pagliuca, that ended up in the net. He will also be fondly remembered for his header against England in Euro ’88. But it was fantastic to get one over on the Italians after they beat us in the quarter-final of the previous World Cup by the same score of 1-0.
It was a very tight group, with all four teams—Mexico, Italy, Norway and Ireland—ending up on four points. It was John Aldridge’s goal against Mexico that got us ahead of Italy and Norway and out of the group.
Some of our performances were absolutely terrible. But again the argument put forward was ‘The end justifies the means.’ Alas, no, for me it does not. If I was the trainer, yes, the end would justify the means; but if I’m a paying spectator it does not. I know that’s something of a contradiction, but it’s the truth. Who in their right mind wants to be bored to death by an unexciting game?
Anyway, there was no justifying our performance against the Dutch. Yes, there is the excuse of the hot weather, but the Dutch had to deal with it too. FIFA should have demanded that games like this be played in the evening, but they were obviously more concerned about scheduling the games to please the television stations. There was no way we were going to be able to play our pressing game against the Dutch as we had against the Italians in New Jersey. It says a lot about the quality of our players back then that they were officially the only team to beat the Italians in that tournament: the Brazilians won the final itself only by beating the Italians on penalties.
As soon as the match against the Netherlands kicked off, all I was thinking was, ‘Here we go again!’ Paul McGrath got what looked like a goal but was penalised because his boot made contact with Frank Rijkaard’s head. Paul was special too: he was a great player in that championship. He will never be forgotten in Ireland. I will always remember being at Lansdowne Road and hearing the fans shout, ‘Ooh, ahh, Paul McGrath!’
I have always got on well with Paul, and it would pain me to watch him destroy himself with his heavy drinking. I’ve met him in his worst states. I meet him quite regularly and I was always giving out to him about the drink. I would say to him, ‘Do you know these people who buy you drinks, Paul? They might as well be sticking knives into your liver. You might think they’re your friends, but they’re not.’ And he would tell me that he knows. I would urge him that every time they come looking for him to go off for a drink he should make up some excuse. ‘Pretend you’re sick or something, but don’t accept a drink.’
And again he would tell me, ‘I know, Jimmy.’ Then he would tell me that he’s heading off to meet a few friends but promises not to drink, and I would see him a few hours later and he would be trying to skip away from me so I wouldn’t catch the smell of booze on his breath. I would say, ‘You were at it again!’ and he would barely reply that, yes, he had hit the bottle again. I couldn’t get through to him.
Amazingly, the boozing didn’t seem to impair his performances on the pitch. I went to a match in Stamford Bridge to do the commentary on Chelsea playing Aston Villa, and there was big talk for days before the match that McGrath wasn’t playing because he had been on the tiles. I went down to the dressing-room before the match to check the teams. Ron Atkinson was the manager of Villa at the time. I asked him, ‘Is the big man playing today?’
‘Well, he’s in there at the moment trying to put on his shirt, and if he gets it on he’s playing.’
He was actually jarred in the dressing-room, but Atkinson thought so much of him that he was willing to let him go out and play. I didn’t talk to him in the dressing-room; I decided if he was like that it was better to stay away.
He actually got the Man of the Match for that game. According to Paul’s own book, he doesn’t remember playing that match. He remembers being picked and doing his best.
The Irish players and the Irish people loved him. I think we love rogues.
Paul is a very quiet man. He’s a lovely singer too. He sings in tune and in time, and he sings lovely, gentle romantic songs. Thankfully, at the time of writing he has been dry for almost a year.
Chapter 13
| BOXERS, IN AND OUT OF THE RING
I’ve been fortunate not to meet too many rude sportspeople. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of negative experiences I’ve had, which is probably rare enough in the sports world.
My biggest run-in occurred in Manchester in 1996 with Nigel Benn, who was the world boxing champion at the time. He had just lost to Thulani Malinga by a twelve-round decision, which lost him the WBC world title, but he was given a chance at the WBO’S world title. Steve Collins was to fight this tough and rough Londoner for the world title. The fight was being sponsored by Beamish, who had brought the Irish media over to Manchester for the press conference.
Benn was more than half an hour late, which made the British press pack furious. It was a tense press conference: the journalists were narky with Benn, and he responded in a similar fashion, with curt and hostile answers.
When the press conference ended I approached Benn. ‘Nigel, I’m Jimmy Magee from RTE television in Ireland. Will you do an interview with me, please?’
‘No,’ he snapped.
‘It would be just a short piece. Just a few quick questions.’
‘No!’ he shouted.
I couldn’t believe how rude he was being to me, without any provocation. Without saying another word I turned around and walked away. As I did I thought to myself, ‘He has some bloody neck. We came specially over here for him and he won’t even bloody talk to us. It’s the height of ignorance.’
Standing outside the hotel, I saw Benn come out the door, and I thought, ‘Now that the whole thing is over and he’s clear of all his commitments I’ll approach him again.’
I walked over to him and asked, ‘Would you be able to do the interview for RTE now?’
‘Didn’t I already tell you no? So fuck off,’ he said angrily.
‘Who do you think you’re talking to?’ I didn’t care that he was the middleweight world boxing champion: I wouldn’t let anyone talk to me with such d
isrespect. Before he had a chance even to reply I told him, ‘If I was twenty years younger I’d put you on your arse here and now.’
‘You and your whole family, you mean,’ he said, smirking.
‘No—just me.’
Our raised voices had by now attracted a crowd around us. Steve Collins later told me that he thought he was going to have to ‘step in there’ to help me and fight Benn out in the car park!
After the confrontation I thought I really had some cheek talking to the world boxing champion like that. But the English media thought it was hilarious and congratulated me for putting Benn in his place. John Rawling of the BBC told me: ‘All of us would love to have said that for years, but nobody had the courage to say it to him.’
I went off to sit on a little wall outside the hotel to calm myself down. I had my head down. I became aware of footsteps approaching me but didn’t look up until I was addressed by the chairman of Beamish. ‘Jimmy, I have someone for you to meet.’
I looked up, and he was standing with Nigel Benn.
‘I’m ready to do that interview now,’ Benn said.
‘Ah, it’s too late. The camera’s gone,’ I sighed.
‘I’ll go and get it,’ Benn offered.
‘Fine,’ I said, nonchalantly. My enthusiasm for interviewing Benn had now completely and utterly vanished. But I smiled as I watched him dash off to find my camera crew. He eventually arrived back with them and we prepared to do the interview.
I thought about the time he was in the ring and he got down on bended knee to propose to his girl-friend. I was feeling very courageous now, and I said, ‘I saw you doing something in the ring with your lady, and I want you to do it now for me and apologise.’
