Eamon Dunphy

Club career

A promising footballer, he left Dublin while still a teenager to join Manchester United as an apprentice. Dunphy did not break into the first team at United, and subsequently left to play for York City, Millwall, Charlton Athletic, Reading and Shamrock Rovers. It was at Millwall that Dunphy made the most impact; he was considered an intelligent and skilful player in the side's midfield. Dunphy was a member of "The Class of '71", the Millwall side that failed by just one point to gain promotion to the Football League First Division. He accompanied Johnny Giles back to Ireland to join Shamrock Rovers in 1977. Giles wanted to make the club Ireland's first full-time professional club, and hoped to make Rovers into a force in European football by developing talented young players at home who would otherwise go to clubs in England. Dunphy was originally intended to be in charge of youth development. However, despite an FAI Cup winners medal in 1978 (his only medal in senior football) and two appearances in the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup, Dunphy became disillusioned with the Irish game and dropped out of football altogether to concentrate on a career in journalism.

International career

Dunphy played 23 times for the Republic of Ireland and was Millwall's most capped international footballer with 22 caps, until surpassed by David Forde and Shane Ferguson. He made his Ireland début on 10 November 1965 in the play-off at the Parc des Princes in Paris for the…

Television

Since the mid-1980s, Dunphy has regularly appeared as an analyst during football coverage on Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ). Since RTÉ acquired the rights to show English football, he has been a regular contributor to Premier Soccer Saturday. He also contributes to analysis of UEFA Champions League games and, in international football, RTÉ's coverage of FIFA World Cups, UEFA European Football Championships and qualifying matches involving the Republic of Ireland national football team. He contributed to RTÉ Sport's coverage of the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. Dunphy's earnings from RTÉ for his football analysis (plus a radio show) include €328,051 in 2008 and €285,915 in 2007. In 2001, he became the first male host of the quiz show The Weakest Link, which aired on TV3, for just one series. In 2003, he was hired again by TV3 to host their new Friday night chat show, entitled The Dunphy Show. Pitted head-to-head with RTÉ's long-running flagship programme, The Late Late Show, Dunphy's show lost what was a highly publicised "ratings war", and was cancelled before its original run was to conclude. He is the first presenter of a made-for-mobile television show on the 3 mobile network in Ireland. His rants and "Spoofer of the Week" are watched by thousands of 3 Mobile customers. The shows were awarded "Best Entertainment Show" at Ireland's Digital Media Awards. Dunphy admits he never uses a mobile himself but enjoys filming for a mobile audience from his…

Dunphy grew up in Drumcondra, Dublin, in what he described as "a one-room tenement flat [with] no electricity, no hot water". He attended Saint Patrick's National School, Drumcondra. In 1958 he got a one year government scholarship to Sandymount High School but he had to work as a messenger at tweed clothing shop Kevin and Howlin.

Dunphy was a daily Mass-goer until he was preparing for marriage to his first wife, Sandra from Salford, when he was 21. He was Catholic and she was Protestant. The priest instructing them for marriage disapproved strongly of the mixed couple, saying that he should not marry her because she was "not a proper person". Dunphy's observance was already weakening but he quit his daily Mass-going at this point. He and Sandra had two children, a boy and a girl, and Dunphy is now a grandfather. His first marriage ended and he moved to Castletownshend in Cork for two years in the early 1990s. He lived with another partner, Inge, before meeting his second wife, RTÉ commissioning editor Jane Gogan, in the Horseshoe Bar in Dublin in 1992. They married at the Unitarian Church on St Stephen's Green on 24 September 2009. In 2002 Dunphy was banned from driving for a decade after being arrested for drunk driving and had eight previous convictions under the Road Traffic Act. In an interview with An Phoblacht, Dunphy, who had previously written highly critical articles on the Provisional IRA and Sinn Féin, stated that he is now a Sinn Féin supporter and declared he had voted for them in the 2011 general election. He described their representatives as "incredibly hard-working and incredibly intelligent". In May 2017, he said that he is a Liverpool supporter. He published his autobiography entitled The Rocky Road in October 2013. Dunphy lives near Ranelagh in Dublin and owns a holiday home in…