It was when she was around 12 that Joanne Cantwell decided what career she wanted to pursue. She was very definite about her choice too. “I decided a mixture of George Hamilton and Des Lynam’s jobs would do for me,” she says.
There were times, though, during the Olympic Games last summer that she was beginning to sense she’d stepped in to Miriam O’Callaghan’s shoes, rolling events in Rio making her morning show on RTÉ television feel more like a current affairs presentation.
A bit Prime Time-ish?
“There were times it felt that way, yeah,” she laughs.
One three-day period stands out. “We’d had the Katie Day, the Michael Conlan Day, they’d been mentally draining for everyone, exhausting. Then all seemed quiet, and I thought at last, we can actually sit down and watch some sport. The women’s golf was on that morning, I was looking forward to it.
“I’d been to make-up, I’d done my last few pieces, was ready to go to the studio, I stood up with my bag over my shoulder. And then Ryle [Nugent, head of RTÉ sport] says ‘someone’s after tweeting that Pat Hickey has been arrested’.”
Cantwell fell back in to her chair.
“YOU. HAVE. GOT. TO. BE. KIDDING. ME?”
So much for watching some golf.
There was still no confirmation of the report when she went live on air, but soon after the charges Hickey was facing were relayed to her through her ear-piece.
“The final one I heard myself repeating as they were being called out to me was ‘. . . and forming a cartel’. I heard myself say . . . ‘cartel’. I was waiting for ‘NO! JEEEESUS!’ to come through my ear. It never did.”
When she decided on a career in sports journalism, she hadn’t quite anticipated days like these.
Immersed in sport
She came by her love of sport honestly. Her father Brendan, a native of Meath, was a PE teacher and even outside school hours he was immersed in sport, setting up his own gymnastics club, playing Gaelic football, he was involved in badminton, cross-country . . . “well, he was involved in everything,” says Cantwell.
She was the fourth of five daughters, but the first with a passion for sport that matched her father’s. She tried her hand at “everything” too, but spent the bulk of her early days dividing her time between Gaelic football, basketball and soccer. Once she joined St Brigid’s GAA Club, though, “my whole life revolved around football”.
All I was interested in was sport, so journalism was the route in to that for me, to keep it part of my life. It's terrible, to this day I only read the back pages . . . I shouldn't admit that
She made the Dublin senior panel when she was 16, in less than two years she was her county’s first choice full-back. When she started out Dublin were in Division Three, but progress was swift, Cantwell earning an All Star nomination in the spell that saw them rise to the first division.
“I loved it. I was the only one on the panel from Brigid’s after a while, but the other players always made me feel a part of it. I’m quiet – I’m not shy, clearly – I don’t drink, a little anti-social,” she laughs, “but they never made me try and do anything. There was just a lovely atmosphere. We played for each other and lived and died for each other.
“The commitment was huge. You trained with your club on a Monday and had matches on a Wednesday, then you were with the county Tuesday and Thursday and had a match on the Sunday. And you might have had a kick-about on the Saturday too. And I think that level of dedication from everyone formed the first stepping stones for Dublin getting to where they are now.”
Her success with Dublin earned her a GAA scholarship to DCU, one of the first of its kind, and it was there she studied journalism.
“All I was interested in was sport, so journalism was the route in to that for me, to keep it part of my life. It’s terrible, to this day I only read the back pages . . . I shouldn’t admit that.”
While at DCU she began working with FM104, doing sports bulletins at the weekend, and in her final year she got a placement with TV3 – where she ended up staying for close to seven years.
“Initially it was going out and doing stories, then it was producing and presenting. It was brilliant, and a great place to start.”
It was where she got her first taste of live television. Terrifying?
“But that’s possibly why I was drawn to it,” she laughs. “Knowing that anything could go wrong – and you have no safety net if it does. I love all that.”
For most that would be a nightmare.
“I probably shouldn’t say this.”
Go on.
“I remember the early years in TV3, every now and then I’d have this dream where I’d be walking from the make-up room to the studio, about to go live on air, and I’d realise all I had on was my bra.”
That might possibly have gone viral on YouTube?
“Oh God, can you imagine?”
First woman
Cantwell is closing in now on 10 years with RTÉ, where she moved from TV3, and in that time she’s registered a number of firsts, among them, in April of last year, becoming the first woman to present RTÉ’s Champions League coverage.
Then there's her work on Against the Head, the rugby magazine show, which she began hosting when Con Murphy moved on in 2008, as well her reporting for The Premiership, RTÉ's highlights show when they had rights to the English Premier League, and The Sunday Game.
The 37-year-old doesn’t, though, dwell on those firsts too much – or at all.
“It’s terrible,” she says, “but I just never think about it in that way. I remember once being at a football press conference and the press officer standing and up and saying, ‘welcome gentlemen’, seeing me and saying ‘eh, ladies and gentlemen’ – it was only then I realised I was the only woman there. It goes over my head, I genuinely don’t even notice.
"And the woman thing – I want to not even be noticed. You think back to Jacqui Oatley when she became the first woman to commentate on Match of the Day [in 2007]. All the fuss, it was ridiculous. What I hated about it all was how acceptable it was to even have a debate about it. There were people coming out and having a go before she even did it," she says, the former Wimbledon manager Dave Bassett being so appalled he said he'd boycott the programme.
Of course I'm delighted that some positive things were said, but for all the people who say nice things there'll be plenty saying not so nice things, and you can't just take one and ignore the other
“I thought it might sound strange just because we weren’t used to hearing a female voice doing commentary, but I couldn’t get over how incredibly normal it sounded. But the reaction, it was just silly. ‘They shouldn’t be allowed.’ There is no ‘they’. Or there shouldn’t be. And the thing I hate more than anything is being called a female sports broadcaster. It’s only when that distinction is no longer made that we’ll be okay. But people write columns about it, it’s a man’s world and all that, but for me that’s the biggest problem, that distinction being made at all.”
There will, she says, always be that group who will never accept you, but, on balance, she reckons sports fans are fair. “They pick out a bluffer straight away, they have so much information in their heads. They will spot someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about, regardless of gender. Perhaps some will test you more and wait longer before they decide about you, but even if they mightn’t like you, if you know your stuff they will accept you.
"We get the texts that come in to Saturday Sport [on RTÉ radio] on our computer, you tend to only notice the ones about you, the ones that are insulting. But it's easy to say 'oh, it's only because I'm a woman', when they're actually having a go at everybody," she laughs.
Social media?
“It’s scary. I’m pretty inept when it comes to it, somebody set me up on Twitter a couple of years ago, so I know how to scroll – and that’s about it. And that’s probably best.”
Sure enough, there she is, one tweet since July 2015 – her response to a colleague welcoming her to Twitter: “Just ’cos she’s signed up,” she wrote, “doesn’t mean she knows how to use it. Is this how I write a tweety-thing?” And she left it at that. A wise woman.
So, for all the plaudits Cantwell has received, notably for her work on the Olympics last year, up to her interviewing of the Olympic Council of Ireland presidential candidates on radio last month, she knows it will always be ‘balanced’ with less than favourable reviews.
“Of course I’m delighted that some positive things were said, but for all the people who say nice things there’ll be plenty saying not so nice things, and you can’t just take one and ignore the other. And lots of nasty stuff has been said down through the years, and you always have to bear that in mind. That’s the way it is. I wouldn’t be too comfortable with praise anyway, so let’s move on,” she laughs.
Live sport
Life’s a circle. Just as her father introduced her to the joys of live sport, Cantwell is doing the same with her daughters Emmy (5) and Alex (3) who reside in her and husband Shay’s Kildare home. Mixed results so far, though.
“The first match I brought Emmy to was Dublin v Cork in the women’s All-Ireland final, she would have been three then, Alex was eight months, being fed in the stand. The second match I brought them to was Ireland v Italy in the Six Nations, the women last year. They were very interested for the first half because they had their wrap that we picked up in Spar beforehand. For the entire second half I had ‘I don’t want to watch the wugby any more Mammy, I WANT TO GO HOME!’”
Two wraps next time, one for each half.
“When I was six months pregnant with Emmy – and I knew it was going to be a girl – I was in the airport going to Cardiff for the Leinster v Northampton Heineken Cup final. There were all these kids going over with their families and I was thinking I can’t wait until that is me, bringing my kids to a match. And I do think that’s a big issue, getting girls to get out there and support girls. I really don’t know why it doesn’t happen, maybe it’s because you tend to get a higher number of men who are in to sport. But even then, not enough women support their own. So yeah, it would have been a conscious decision to bring Emmy and Alex to women’s matches.”
Are they sporty?
“They are, Alex definitely, Emmy has ability but not inclination. But I wouldn’t be one for pushing them, whatever they want to do that’s fine. I nearly think I was too obsessive with sport, so I’m okay with them branching out and doing other things.”
Bad mouthing
How competitive is it in RTÉ for the top presenting jobs? Are you all bad mouthing each other?
“See, I miss everything, I’d say there’s loads of that going on,” she laughs. “But I go in, I do my job, and I go home. That’s why Des [Cahill] on Saturdays is so important. Des hears everything and I hear nothing. He’s like, ‘but you HAVE to, you HAVE to have heard this?!’ And I’m, ‘no – I don’t even know who that is. Who is she?’
Work-wise, hopes for the future?
“There are loads of things that I would hope for, but whether I should say them out loud . . . I probably shouldn’t,” she laughs. “It just depends on what jobs open up. But I am ambitious, absolutely. I do want to move up, I do. I want to be regularly presenting live sport, all those sorts of things. Go up higher. I love what I do. I’m very, very lucky.”
