While the Irish have no team in Olympic basketball. the Cork man’s eccentric, enthusiastic commentary has earned him his own fervent fan base
brings forth a collective fever dream of strange, communal treasures. We discuss synchronised diving instead of the weather. Flava Flav is temporarily rebranded as a champion of women’s water polo. The phrase “pommel horse” re-enters our shared lexicon. Snoop Dogg feeds carrots to dressage horses.
First tapped by Raidió Teilifís Éireann in 2004 to anchor basketball for the Athens Games, McCarthy’s commentary has since spawned memes, a Soundboard, Facebook fan pages, YouTube remixes and a modest but mighty fandom for whom his appearances are an Olympic touchstone – and the only Irish connection to the Games’ popular basketball series, in which Ireland has failed to qualify.
While some of McCarthy’s -isms are borrowed phrases stamped with his trademark delivery, other larger-than-life quips skirt mainstream colloquialisms just enough to be uniquely – and hilariously – his own.with abandon, either gleefully unaware or unbothered by the implications such terms carry in more crude contexts. He peppers broadcasts with foreign linguistics, not always pronouncing his French correctly, but saying it with conviction anyway.
It was not always this way. McCarthy started with RTÉ as an analyst, more of a stats guy than an entertainer. Then, at the 2004 Athens Games, he was asked to step into a broadcast booth for a game as a precautionary fill-in – a tape, he was told, that would almost certainly not be aired.
Still, basketball has remained popular on the island, and McCarthy has since built a career coaching in Ireland’s midlands and – of course – serving as one of the country’s most beloved commentators. Each time the Games roll around, a new legion of Timmy McCarthy stans, or obsessive followers, are christened.
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