Reluctant autobiographer Marty Morrissey tells Owen Ryan once he began his memoir, the words just flowed
WHEN one looks at the great moments from Clare’s sporting history, Marty Morrissey keeps popping up.
Famously quipping that a cow wouldn’t be milked in the county for a week in 1992, the ‘We’re going to do it” moment with Loughnane in ‘95, roaring ‘Holy Moses’ as Domhnall O’Donovan levelled the 2013 drawn All-Ireland.
Now 62, Marty has penned an autobiography ‘It’s Marty’, and given that he has made his name as a sports broadcaster there is plenty of that sort of material, but he says it’s really for the wider audience.
“It’s not really a sports book, there’s obviously GAA in it, but there’s more than that, it has a broad spectrum I would like to think. I would hope that people enjoy the stories, enjoy my journey to where I am, have a few laughs along the way.”
A Marty autobiography was never high on his agenda and he had turned down previous requests from publishers.
“It was never my ambition to write a book, it was never on my to-do list. I had been asked a couple of times by various publishers and I’d always declined, mainly because I was too lazy or too busy,” he jokes.
However Larry Bass, who is involved in the production of Dancing With The Stars, asked him to talk to Michael McLoughlin of Penguin Random House, and after some encouragement he decided to give it a shot.
“Once I heard the word publisher I said forget it, I know what he’s looking for. Larry said will you have a quick word with him anyway. I spoke to Michael and I said no in February 2020.
“In April he came back to me and we were in lockdown. I still said no, but also we’ll see. By the time July came I had done Marty in the Shed, there was no sport on, and I said maybe I’ll try it.”
However, he didn’t start until a few months later and took his time once he finally did begin.
“Next thing the championship started in October, the All-Ireland was in December and I started writing this in January. I missed every single deadline that they put down for me. I missed March, April, May, June, July and August.
“I started writing on the second or third of December and I finished on the second or third of September which was very late, by any standards!” Marty laughs.
The book goes back to his early life, first in New York and then in West Clare. There are also plenty of GAA anecdotes, recollections of his time trying to get started in RTE, being at Spanish Point after graduating from college and adventures in entertainment such as Dancing With The Stars and Marty and Bernard.
More than anything Marty wants people reading it to have a laugh and enjoy his yarns and recollections.
“One or two people have read it so far and they texted me to say they were laughing out loud, that’s what I would like to achieve,” he said last week, two days before it hit the shelves.
His publisher had a vision for the book, but Marty found he had to go his own way a little bit.
“I hadn’t written for a long time. Michael McLoughlin said he wanted the anecdotes and the stories, because he’d heard me hosting some events and having the craic. I started writing one or two stories and I said this is crap, it’s terrible, the only way I think I can write this is to go back to the beginning.”
While Marty thought there was no way he’d hit the required word count, he ended up going above it.
“I got a good bit done. He wanted 80,000 words, I said I didn’t do that for my thesis in Galway, you can forget it. But I think I surpassed it by a fair bit!” he laughs.
He found that has put one memory on paper it tended to spark off another in his mind, and the writing went on and on.
“When you start writing you start remembering. I never kept a diary once, I don’t now and I should, so I was trying to remember things and put them into perspective. I really had to work on it to put things into chronological order, you do forget, you know. But I found that when you remember one thing it leads you to remember another.”
He says he wasn’t sure if the book was up to scratch when he passed in onto the publisher, but they were quite happy with what he had come up with.
“We all write in a certain style, I didn’t know whether the style was good or whatever, i just felt I’d tell the story, produce as much as I could and we’d see where we’d go then. But they seem to be happy with it.”
The book goes back to his early life, some of which was spent in New York, before his family left the Big Apple for the greener surrounds and gentler pace of life in West Clare.
While crossing the Atlantic was a big change, Marty said he settled in well and had already looked on this county as home.
“We’d be coming home on summer holidays to Clare and it was to Clare we’d come more than anywhere else. I’ve relations in Cork and Tramore on my mother’s side, but to me Clare was home. When my Dad bought the pub in Quilty the foundation had been made.”
He has been to three Olympics now, commentated on several All-Ireland finals and many provincial finals, but began commentating on the back of tractor and trailers in the 1980s.
Marty’s first game for RTE was a Dublin-Armagh national football league match in the spring of 1989, and that summer he came to some prominence with his first live game, a famous Offaly-Antrim All Ireland semi final, when the northerners sprung a massive surprise.
After the game a disappointed Offaly produced a fabulous sporting gesture when they applauded Antrim off the field, capping an amazing afternoon.
“It was to be the curtain raiser but suddenly it became the big game and they were using my commentary on the six o’clock and nine o’clock news. I owe a lot to the Antrim hurlers!”
Marty had added to the viewers’ enjoyment, clearly having his research done as he knew the Antrim players’ nicknames and had various other snippets of information about an almost unknown side.
He loves his work and despite his amiable persona, there is probably quite a strong ambitious streak in Marty, given he had to pay a lot of dues to get a shot in RTE.
“It has not been easy, I never found things that easy, I suppose that’s the story of the book, sheer perseverance, because I got rejected more often than I got accepted. I just had to keep knocking and go again.”
While he’s perhaps the most recognisable GAA commentator, he is grateful that RTE have given him licence to operate in other guises in recent years, with things like Dancing With The Stars and Marty In The Shed.
While he’s in his sixties now and has an autobiography written, he’s clearly very energetic and has plenty of drive left in him.
“I would never have written this only for Covid. It’s only half time and I’m still ready to go for more.”
Owen Ryan has been a journalist with the Clare Champion since 2007, having previously worked with a number of other publications in Limerick, Cork and Galway. His first book will be published in December 2024.