Joe Brolly is an Irishbarrister, Gaelic football analyst and former player from Dungiven, Derry, Northern Ireland. Brolly played for the Derry GAA in the 1990s and early 2000s and was part of their first ever All-Ireland Senior Football Championship winning side in 1993 and also won two Ulster Senior Football Championships and four National League titles. He also won two All Star Awards during his career. Brolly played club football for St Canice's Dungiven for most of his career, before transferring to St Brigid's GAC in Belfast. With Dungiven he won two Derry Senior Football Championships and one Ulster Senior Club Football Championship. He usually played as right corner forward and was renowned for his accurate point-taking, goal-scoring ability, pace and ability to take on opponents. He was also known for his goal celebration of blowing kisses to the crowd, and had his nose broken twice during his career immediately after scoring goals. Since retiring he has fashioned a niche in television punditry, described by one critic as "the most lippy and articulate pundit on Irish television". In 2012, he was dubbed "the Salman Rushdie of County Mayo".
Personal and professional life
Brolly is the son of noted traditional singer and LimavadySinn Féin councillor Anne Brolly. His father Francie, also a traditional musician, played Gaelic football for Derry in the 1960s, and was later a Sinn Féin councillor and MLA. Joe Brolly is a first cousin of Derry player Liam Hinphey and Monaghan player Vincent Corey, and second cousin to Tyrone footballers Colm and Plunkett Donaghy. Brolly boarded in Saint Patrick's Grammar School, Armagh where he played basketball for Ireland as a schoolboy. After school he progressed to Trinity College, Dublin to read law, before doing a postgraduate course at Queen's University Belfast. He was a prominent member of the Dublin University Central Athletic Club in his Trinity days, and became a member of the student executive. He is married and has five children. As a barrister he has specialised in criminal matters and has defended Irish republicans in court. He was involved in a UK Supreme Court case in 2011 that established a right to compensation for a miscarriage of justice without the requirement to prove the innocence of the wrongly convicted person. He also works as a journalist, writing a column for Gaelic Life and the Ireland Mail on Sunday. A radio and television football pundit, he is a regular on the long-running RTÉ programme The Sunday Game.
Playing career
County
Brolly made his Derry Senior debut against Cavan in the 1990 National League. In 1993 he was part of the Derry side that won the Ulster Championship and the county's first All-Ireland Senior Football Championship. His All Stars Award recognition surprisingly came in the relatively barren years of 1996 and 1997. He was top scorer in the 1997 Ulster Championship with 3–15. Brolly added a second Ulster Senior Football Championship in 1998, in the final of which he scored the clinching goal in the last minute. Derry won the National Football League four times in a nine-year period from 1992 to 2000, with Brolly being part of all four. Brolly and Derry finished runners-up to Offaly in the 1998 National League decider.
It was in the Sigerson Cup that Joe Brolly first appeared on the national stage. He won his only inter-varsity medal in 1992, as a member of Queen's victorious Ryan Cup team.
Hurling
Brolly played hurling for local club Kevin Lynch's when they won Division 2 of the All-Ireland Féile na nGael in 1982.
Coaching career
Brolly helped out with the Antrim team that finished runners-up in the 2007 Tommy Murphy Cup and winners of the 2008 competition.
