Bundoran native Eamonn Gavigan's great sporting life as a Sports Reporter

"You are asked at school, what do you want to be when you grow up? I don't think any kid knows what they want to be."

Those are the words of a Bundoran native who fell into the world of sports journalism by chance and ended up doing a job that he still pinches himself when he looks back on his career.

Eamonn Gavigan was born in Bundoran in 1947 and after a short sojourn in Galway, ended up in Nottingham in central England where he joined the Nottingham Post and was trained as a journalist covering rugby, horse racing and his favourite sport, golf.

"I thought I was in a toy shop, I couldn't believe how lucky I was. Covering these sports," says Gavigan, who was back home in his native Bundoran recently. He spent 44 wonderful years with the Nottingham newspaper before retiring in 2012. He got to travel the world covering golf and even got to play on the famous Augusta course which hosts the Masters.

And fate played a big part in every step of his career.

After National School in Bundoran, he went to the Da La Salle brothers in Ballyshannon before moving to Galway to complete his secondary education, staying with an aunt.

"I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up.  Nothing much has changed that way," laughs Gavigan. But even before then, a love of sport, and especially golf had been nurtured in Bundoran.

He would go on to play minor and junior football for Galway alongside the likes of Jimmy Duggan, Collie McDonagh and Liam Sammon during the famous Galway years of 1964, '65 and '66, and he recalls an incident when he was banned during that time for playing soccer.

"I used to sit on a wall on the outskirts of Galway getting a lift to training and one evening I was left sitting there. Soccer then was no no, but we also played soccer. I had played soccer for Mervue United a couple of weeks before. Salthill and Mervue were a bit like Ballyshannon and Bundoran. They reported me and I was suspended for three months. That's why I wasn't picked up off the wall," says Gavigan.

"I couldn't get in the Donegal minor team. We had a good Galway team, we won the Connacht but not the championship," said Gavigan, who said one of his opponents during that time was Dermot Earley of Roscommon.

"I often look back and wonder what if," he says thinking of a Gaelic football career.

His love of golf came from caddying at Bundoran Golf Club from when he was six or seven, and the arrival of Christy O'Connor Snr to the club. "We used to caddy for the members and then I was asked to caddy for Christy. He had a house at the top of the Great Northern Road and I ended up babysitting for Christy and his wife Mary.

"The only place they could go in those days was to the cinema. It was the first place I ever had a Quality Street sweet. We had aniseed balls. That was a delicacy for us. When Mary went to the pictures, she put the tin out and we could help ourselves."

Eamonn pictured caddying for Christy O'Connor snr at the British Masters

Gavigan says he didn't see Christy again for 14 or 15 years when he was playing in a tournament outside Nottingham. "Then in 1992 the English Seniors was played at my home club in Nottingham, Woolaton Park Golf Club, and I caddied for him that week. Christy was my hero," says Gavigan, who said he learned how to play golf by just watching Christy. 

"I loved watching Christy hitting balls. He used to take me down to the beach and hit ball after ball and I'd get them back."

And he rhymes off the tournaments he won, the first four figure sum in European golf and the first five figure sum, £25,000 at a tournament at Hollinwell, just outside Nottingham and his Ryder Cup and Canada Cup successes.

Gavigan has some great stories of his time caddying, coming up to the golf club in the morning and surviving on mushrooms around the course. And also of getting members to go in and buy Tiffin chocolate when they had funds later in the day.

NOTTINGHAM

After emigrating to Nottingham in 1967 Gavigan's journey took off. He was married within a year and in 1969 a vacancy occurred in the Nottingham Post, where his wife, Margaret, worked in the Cashier Department. He went for the interview and was asked 'when can you start?'

"I went into the library initially.  Then they asked me if I would like to be trained as a journalist. As luck would have it, or unlucky for some, some of the people who were covering sports were coming to the end of their career, so I kinda fell into their job.

"The first man to die was the racing correspondent; then the golf man died, the rugby man died and I sorta did all three. That's basically how it came to be.

"We had a print of 190,000 a day; we had six different editions.  We had our own print machine and we used to print the News of the World too. The paper is still going, but only from a small office and they sell 7,000 copies a day now.

"It's all online now," says Gavigan.

Of course, Nottingham also had a big soccer team in Notts Forest, who had great success in the late 1970s, early '80s under Brian Clough.

"I knew Cloughie well. I covered the odd football match when people were off. But I knew Cloughie socially. Whenever we had a do, he was always invited. A Jekyll and Hyde guy, he could be the nicest bloke in the world and the most horrible. He changed the face of football in  Nottingham. I mean we won two European Cups."

But while he didn't get to cover many football games, he was busy with the other sports. "It was golf through the summer, rugby through the winter and racing nearly all year round.

"But I was lucky because in golf I got a couple of local people on my patch including Brian Waites, who played Ryder Cup. Then, of course Lee Westwood came along and I got to travel with them everywhere.

"It fell lucky that way. I had a golf page every Tuesday for the local scene and Westwood and Waites were the weekend stories, as they had played in tournaments."

Gavigan went to cover the Masters in August on nine occasions and was one of the lucky journalists who got to play the course.

"I played it in 1998, because they have a ballot and draw 40 names out of all the journalists. And my name came out the very first year I was there. 

"It is some place that. No matter what you would say about it, it wouldn't do it justice. 

"You get a letter of invitation, just like the players. You can only play there if you get an invite. I got it framed along with the scorecard," said Gavigan.

Some of Eamonn's memories from his time in Augusta

The Nottingham Post was one of the biggest in the country at the time.

"We were one of the first papers in England to be computerised. We were bought out in 1995 by the Daily Mail Group. Then I think five or six years ago, they sold it on to the Trinity Group.

"The Daily Mail group had a golf society and there was no expense spared. We went to Monte Carlo, in the Algarve, for a pittance. Every one of us got a room to ourselves. It was all paid for by the Daily Mail."

The Bundoran native says that Nottingham was a real sporting hub then.

Back in the '80s Nottingham ruled sport in England. You had Cloughie winning European Cups, the rugby team were one of the best, they were all amateur at the time. They had a host of internationals.

"You had the cricket team that won everything in England and we had a couple of other sports that we were best at."

The rugby club had so many English internationals. "You had Dusty Hare, Gary Rees. You had Brian Moore, the hooker; Rob Andrew, there were about eight or 10 Nottingham lads who were playing for England at the time.

"But then it turned professional and for some reason or another Nottingham couldn't attract the money. The money was basically in London. As far as I know the Premiership, as they call it now, is ringfenced, so there is no relegation. There was up to three or four years ago. There were a couple of times we weren't far off. Exeter were down with us, London Welsh were down with us but they got promoted.

"Money dictates everything. Look at LIV golf, and I'm not against LIV. I'm on the side where you are entitled to earn your living wherever you want. The Americans have always dictated to Europe. If you go back to Sevy (Ballesteros), he was the first big superstar we had (I played with Seve once in a Pro-Am); then after Seve you had Woosnam, Sandy Lyly, Nick Faldo, Olazabal, I've probably missed a couple. Spread across 15 years, they ruled the Masters.

"Then the Americans said if you want to play over here, you have to play 10 or 12, you have to commit, so they tore the heart out of the European Tour.

"The Americans are sort of moaning about the LIV tour, yet they did to Europe what LIV are doing to them now," said Gavigan, who has strong views on the matter.

"They have to sit down and sort it out among themselves. There are too many tours now.

"The Yanks dominate everything. Where has this new handicap system come from, it has come from America. I think it is the craziest system ever.

"I'm playing off 11, Billy's  (his brother) off 22 or something. I'm saying, there's something wrong here," he says. Gavigan knows his golf as he played off scratch in the early 1970s.

RACING

His coverage of racing for the paper saw him regularly travel to Paris for the Prix de l'Arc and he interviewed Lester Piggott's dad, someone he said was the complete opposite to Lester.

Also during his racing days, he had a chance interview with one of the big stars of the 1980s, JR Ewing.

"I've been incredibly lucky. I met JR Ewing. I was at the Nottingham Races one day, 1984 or 1985 and my daughter Abigail was off school. She came running across saying 'JR's here, JR's here'.  I said JR who? She says JR Ewing. Sure he was there with his big stetson. I rang the office and they said see if you can get a word with him.

"He was okay. He kept calling me Sir. We had a chat for 10 or 15 minutes. He got a train up to Nottingham and got an ordinary taxi to the racecourse, no airs and graces.

"The funny thing was I went then to the Prix de lArc in Paris and had my wife with me and everyone was queueing up to see who was going in at the celebrity entrance. And along comes the cast of Dallas and they come over and JR sees me and says 'Are you alright Sir?'

He says he met some really nice people and also a few who weren't as nice to interview, among them Colin Montgomerie and Willie Carson, while on the plus side you had Peter Alliss, who was a great mate of Christy O'Connor's.

As for the best golfer he has seen, he says: Tiger probably. Seve had more personality than Tiger, but Tiger has proved himself, week after week," he said, also mentioning David Leadbetter, who coached Lee Westwood. "He was more forthcoming than everyone I had ever interviewed. I asked him why are you coaching Lee. He said 'I want to take him to No 1', and he did.  It was only for six or eight weeks, but he got him there.  He was one of the nicest blokes, and he was the original coach, before Butch Harmon and all them."

Eamonn on the Bundoran Junior team which won the Donegal title in 1966

Eamonn Gavigan has many strings to his bow including winning a Donegal junior championship medal with Bundoran in 1966 and he continued to play Gaelic football when he emigrated.

But nowadays he is able to relax and enjoy playing golf and spending time with his family, his wife Margaret and daughter Abigail and son Shaun, who is married and living in Seville in Spain.

He has few regrets after a life spent doing something he loved. "The one regret I have is that I didn't get a golf scorecard from the many courses I've played all over the world."