Rising sports presenter Aisling O’Reilly said there is a sisterhood among her female peers in what was a traditionally male-dominated world.
The former Off The Ball reporter, who is about to start co-presenting a new football show for kids on RTÉ, said an assumption exists that there is ‘competition’ between the country’s top female sports broadcasters.
But O’Reilly told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘Anytime I get to see any of those girls, like [former presenter and recently appointed Fine Gael Senator] Evanne [Ní Chuilinn], Jacqui [Hurley], Marie [Crowe], Joanne [Cantwell], all of them that are doing it… They’re out there, and they’ve had many experiences, good and bad, that they can pass on.
‘I’m always asking [questions], and I’m all for that, because I think the more women there are supporting other women [the better].
‘There’s room for all of us – that’s what I always say.’ The Meath woman added: ‘When people say there’s competition… we don’t say that about the males, [even though] there’s loads of males doing it.
‘I think the more we support each other and the more women doing it, then young girls will see that and believe they can do it as well.’
The sight of women hosting or contributing to sports programmes was less common when O’Reilly was growing up in Ratoath, Co. Meath, as one of five children, and even when she took her first tentative steps into reporting some eight years ago.
But she said any perceived scepticism from her male colleagues was probably projected from within: ‘I’d go into the press box, and it would just be men, and I’d be thinking that they’re wondering, “What is she doing here?”
‘But I have to say, my experience with all of the journalists that I’ve come across has been so positive.’ Other sports reporters were always ‘so good to me’ while travelling to major events such as World Cups, she added, despite her ‘hundreds of questions’ in the press box. ‘Hopefully they saw my interviews and thought, 'all right, she knows her stuff.”
While she ‘never had any really bad experiences’, she acknowledged she has been ‘lucky’ on that front, adding: ‘That’s not the case for all females.’
O’Reilly sought freelance sports gigs for a few years while working at 98FM and Newstalk in administrative roles for a few years before Off The Ball made her their first female full-time woman reporter.
She said press conferences made her ‘scared and nervous’ at the beginning, and she still finds going live on air nerve-wracking. O’Reilly admits leaving the station to go freelance several months ago was ‘really daunting. ’
But landing her first gig in RTÉ – on top of presenting work on Premier Sports and GAA+ (formerly GAAGO) – took some of the pressure off.
The new show, Total Football, to be co-presented with Rasdi Nsimba – ‘a lovely lad’ – will air for 10 Saturdays, beginning next weekend.
O’Reilly hopes the show will recreate the manic energy of long-gone weekend classics such as SMTV Live on ITV or her own favourite growing up, Soccer AM on Sky Sports. The former Samba Soccer summer camp coach ‘can’t wait for the chaos’, and said the ‘most exciting part’ about the offer was working with kids again.
‘You don’t know what’s going to happen,’ she said. ‘But the kids will just be having a ball and enjoying themselves.’
There will be some structure, however, including skills tutorials and pre-recorded segments with international aces such as Evan Ferguson and Julie-Ann Russell, who recently came back from having a child to play for the girls in green again.
O’Reilly said her own young relatives are ‘so excited’ for the series to start, while friends and family with children are ‘just buzzing to sit down with their kids to watch the show’.
She hopes that will happen across the country and that it might prise kids away from devices towards something more communal that they can learn from, regardless of their ability level.
The Co. Down resident said she rarely gets to play soccer these days herself, but still plays Gaelic football. It was through the sport that she met her husband Colm Maginn while they were both working in New York and playing for the same club there.
She said that the newlyweds’ dream honeymoon in January to Thailand, Vietnam and Dubai was ‘incredible’ and ‘honestly life changing in some ways’.
‘Just to open your eyes to how other people live, and how little they have, and how happy they are. I think leaving, we just felt so blessed and privileged for the way we live, and also grateful for everything we have.’
The presenter said she might dip into other fields in her work, such as entertainment, but insisted she will ‘never go away from sport’ completely.
It has given her too many unforgettable moments, like interviewing Johnny Sexton after his final game in the 2023 Rugby World Cup, or the Meath women’s team winning their first-ever senior title in 2021.
‘That was so emotional,’ she said of her native county’s triumph. ‘I cried in the press box. You’re not allowed to do that. You’re not meant to clap in the press box. I didn’t know there were these rules. I just did my own thing.
‘[Mayo legend] Cora Staunton was an idol for me growing up, and she was beside me commentating with me, and I was bawling because Meath had just won.
‘We beat the Dubs,’ she added. ‘That never gets old.’
