Broadcaster Gráinne McElwain presents the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship Final at Croke Park for a classic showdown between Mayo and Tyrone. Jennifer Stevens catches up with her in advance of the big match.

Broadcaster Gráinne McElwain will be presenting Sky Sports coverage of the All Ireland Football Final this weekend. It’s her second year at the helm of GAA coverage for Sky Sports, a dream job for the Monaghan woman who grew up in Ballinode, a village in the north of the county, just on the border. Her family were immersed in her local club and traditional music and Gráinne started her career as an Irish and History teacher. Fate was to step in though and after coming across an ad looking for a sports researcher in Waterford, she gave up her teaching job and moved to the other end of the country. “I don't want to have regrets. I don't want to be someone that goes, ‘God, I wish I had done that, or why did I not try and do that?’ I think that's something that really drives me because I'm like, ‘Well, the worst thing that could happen is that it won't work out. Something else will come along’.”

“I actually really enjoyed teaching kids, and I love interacting with kids. I think they're great. They're so positive. It's a really worthwhile profession. I think teachers get a lot of stick, and it's not fair because so many of them put so much hard work into it – it is a really tough job. I think for me as a young teacher, I was in my early 20s, looking at people stay 40 years in one job, and I just thought I'm not that type of person, not then, not now. I just couldn't be in the same place for 40 years.”

Career Switch

“I remember going down to do the interview in Waterford. I got the job and then literally within six weeks, I left my full-time pensionable job, moved county, and changed careers which is actually crazy when you think about it. But what I found really interesting was the attitude of people. Some people were going, "oh my gosh. You're so right. If I was young, I would do that. You're right to do it." Then, other people were going, "Are you mad? You're giving up your full-time job."

“But I was only like 24 or 25. I had no commitments. I had no mortgage, no dependents, no kids. I think I'm the type of person who always thinks that if there's an opportunity, you should just go for it."

“My parents backed me too and told me to do it. They knew I could always get another teaching job if I needed to. My whole philosophy was I was getting a contract for a year. If I really didn't like it, I could always come back to Dublin or go back to Monaghan. I didn't have to stay at it but at least I would have tried.”

It was a leap of faith that really paid off for Gráinne. Being fluent in Irish helped too and she found herself on screen much quicker than she anticipated. Since then, she has fronted shows on TG4, BBC, RTE and now Sky Sports

“I love the variety of jobs that I do. I think that's why I love being a freelance even though it obviously hasn't been easy or stable all the time. Especially this year, during the pandemic when there was no work. "

“Lots of other times, you meet loads of different great people and different production companies, different broadcasters, and you get to learn, to grow, and you get better as well at the things that you do. I really enjoy that a bit.”

Being a woman in an often male dominated world isn’t something that ever held Gráinne back and she’s a very passionate advocate of women in sport.

Equality

“I've been very lucky in that I've worked very much in a male-dominated world where I do see more men than women. Any man that I have worked with has been absolutely lovely, very helpful, very charming and hasn't been condescending or anything like that. I stand very much part of the group. I've never felt like, "God, what is she doing here? " which is great. I've been very fortunate.”

Gráinne is a big supporter of, and believer in, the 20x20 movement, which is about creating a cultural shift in our perception of girls and women in sport. “Visibility is huge. I think you have to have visibility. I remember being at the launch of 20x20. What really struck me was the video they showed. There were about three or four young girls and they were asked who their sporting role models were. Every single one of them was a fellow like Ronaldo or whoever, and I just thought oh my God. It's really sad. It's not because there aren’t any women, it’s just because they don't see them, they haven't heard about them, they don’t know who they are. But I’m very conscious of speaking about this with young boys as well. They're going to be the men of the future. If they're brought up in a society where their role models are equally revered by both, well then, that's great. I think it's really important for young girls and boys to know who these role models are, and I think that's what's so great about the 20x20 campaign, is that it opened up that conversation.

“But it’s just as important for us parents and guardians to be very aware that when we’re talking about sports and brilliant players that we speak about men and women. It's adults that differentiate, and children learn from adults, but children are very open to whatever people are - they take everyone at face value.”

Gráinne thinks that things like Lidl’s sponsorship of Ladies Football is really important because it puts the women front and centre.

“It’s huge. I think that's really important because again, visibility matters, and it's reaching the masses. What's really good though, is that the ads were brilliantly done. They used real players where maybe something like that would have used actors in the past. They were really behind it too, you could see that when you went into the stores.

I also think TG4 deserves an awful lot of credit as well for promoting women's sports. I have always said that they were one of the first ones that saw the potential of women's sport, getting involved in ladies' football over 20 years ago and just staying with it. Genuinely, they do it because they love the sport. From the beginning and during my time working on it, the team that was around it just really loved being involved in ladies' football, and I think that comes across as well.”

Family Life

Another bonus that came from her move to Waterford all those years ago, was meeting her husband. The couple now live in Béal an Daingin in the Connemara Gaeltacht and have three children, Éabha, Ferdia Eoghan. While she was used to being on the road a lot for work, Gráinne found herself at home for much of the pandemic.

“It has been challenging. I think it's been challenging for a lot of people, but I think you try to take the positive of it. I suppose in terms of work for me, everything just dried up literally overnight, and I went away from having my own work to being a full-time mum, full-time teacher and full-time everything, so I won't lie, that was challenging. I found that even though I'm a secondary teacher by trade, the home-schooling was difficult. But then, on the positive side, it was lovely to be able to spend time without having to rush or, do all the travel that I do with my line of work. It was great actually just to be in one place and to be with the kids. We had that stunning weather when the first lockdown came, where we live in Connemara we have lots of beautiful beaches so we were off out doing lots of big walks. You really got to do stuff that you never really got a chance, or felt that you had a chance to do.”

Gráinne is back to work now and with three children who play with their local GAA club they must thing that their mammy is pretty cool.

“Ha, not so much. They’re like, ‘oh there’s mammy on the TV, will we watch cartoons?’ That's it. That’s all I get. It’s so funny, one day my youngest said: "You were really good on the television actually, mummy." I said, "Oh, you watched it?" "No, I didn't. We were watching cartoons. I just saw you at the start."

I was like, thanks for that, what can you say?”

Gráinne’s laughing, but even if her kids don’t appreciate her right now, there’s a whole generation of female GAA fans watching her on Sky Sports who think she’s pretty great. She’s right, visibility matters and she’s right at the forefront of sport and broadcasting and that is very cool.

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