Martin Breheny
Máirtín Mac an Bhreithiún
OccupationJournalist
Years activec. 1975–
Employer(s)The Tuam Herald
The Irish Press
Irish Independent
WorksBooks on:
John O'Leary (1997),
Mick O'Dwyer (c. 2000),
D. J. Carey (2013),
Brian Cody
Awards"Sports Story of the Year" (2017)
Hall of Fame (2020)

Martin Breheny is an Irish journalist and sportswriter from County Galway. He began his career at The Tuam Herald before moving to The Irish Press in 1979.

Breheny is former Gaelic games correspondent with the Irish Independent, for which he continues to write as of 2024.

Early life

Breheny is from the north County Galway village of Kilkerrin.[1] He played for, and later served as secretary of, his local Kilkerrin-Clonberne GAA club before he moved to Dublin in 1979.[2]

Breheny spent four years working for The Tuam Herald before embarking on a 41-year national media career.[3] At The Tuam Herald Breheny was a contemporary of Jim Carney and Michael Lyster.[4]

National career

Breheny began working for The Irish Press in 1979.[4] He had retired as the Irish Independent's Gaelic games correspondent by the time of the COVID-19 pandemic;[4] however, he continued to write for the paper.[5]

Breheny has covered All-Ireland Finals in both football and hurling for many decades, attending his first final in 1971 (football) and his 100th in 2019 (football; drawn game).[1] In 2020, he gave his favourite final in each code as 1998 (football) and 2009 (hurling).[4]

He is a regular member of the All Star selection committees,[4][6] first doing so in 1983.[7]

Breheny helped write the autobiographies of footballers John O'Leary (published 1997) and Mick O'Dwyer (published c. 2000),[8] and hurlers D. J. Carey (published 2013)[9] and Brian Cody.[4]

Awards

Breheny won "Sports Story of the Year" at the 2017 NewsBrands Ireland Journalism awards.[10]

He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in March 2020.[3]

References

  1. 1 2 "'My 100th All-Ireland final — tales from the great occasions': From being nearly drowned on Hill 16 in 1971 to covering what could be a historic final, Martin Breheny reflects on the drama of it all". Irish Independent. 31 August 2019.
  2. ↑ "Shane Walsh saga shows why GAA need to take tougher stance on Dublin clubs' import deals". Irish Independent. 2 August 2022.
  3. 1 2 "Martin Breheny announced as GAA MacNamee Awards Hall of Fame recipient". Galway Bay FM. 31 March 2020.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 McEvoy, Enda (7 February 2020). "Martin Breheny: Old school to the last and still on the beat!". Kilkenny People. Archived from the original on 8 February 2020. According to his biographer Martin Breheny, what you see is what you get with Kilkenny senior hurling manager Brian Cody… I've sat around the All-Stars selection committee table with him for the past 20 years… He raises the subject of Cody's biography, which he ghosted, without having to be prompted. It was criticised for being bland and uninformative and not revealing secrets; Breheny's counter-argument is that Cody doesn't do secrets, that there's nothing arcane about his recipe for success and that in this instance what you see is very much what you get. 'People criticised it for not showing the Brian Cody they thought existed. But they were trying to impose their own view of him. The Brian Cody in the book is him'.
  5. ↑ See Martin Breheny
  6. ↑ "Cluxton again pays All Star price for idle hands". RTÉ. 20 February 2021.
  7. ↑ "All-Star path needs new direction". Irish Independent. 2 November 2016.
  8. ↑ Moran, Seán (7 February 2018). "Harte still believes he can bring back glory days to Tyrone". The Irish Times. In his autobiography Blessed and Obsessed (with Martin Breheny), published just over 10 years ago, O'Dwyer was even blunter about the challenge of letting go.
  9. ↑ Moran, Seán (6 November 2013). "The great balancing act of being DJ Carey: Exhilaration of a great hurling career no shield against life's vagaries". The Irish Times.
  10. ↑ Linehan, Hugh (2 November 2017). "Irish Times writers win seven prizes at journalism awards". The Irish Times. Retrieved 28 June 2020.
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