Clara chuffed with her ‘labour of love’
Clara Hester has been working in RTÉ for the last five years and has been involved in the production of some high-profile programmes like The Sunday Game.
What do you get when you put four of Gaelic football’s leading personalities into a room?
On the field, plenty of skin and hair flying, perhaps, but one County Roscommon woman has found out by managing to film, edit and produce one of the most eagerly-anticipated RTÉ Sport productions this Christmas.
, featuring Seán Cavanagh, Lee Keegan, Diarmuid Connolly and James O’Donoghue, will be available on the RTÉ Player from St. Stephen’s Day. It is the brainchild of Roscommon Town native, Clara Hester, who has been working with the national broadcaster for the last five years.
The idea stemmed from a piece for the All-Star awards in November where, of course, Enda Smith became Roscommon’s first football recipient in 22 years.
Cavanagh, Keegan, Connolly and O’Donoghue — former Tyrone, Mayo, Dublin and Kerry stars — sat down and discussed some of the big talking points of the year. But so much insightful material came out of the discussion that Clara pitched the idea of giving the four lads’ opinions greater air time.
In a world where there’s an enhanced craving for GAA discussion about some of the broader issues in the game, her request didn’t fall on deaf ears. Given that the idea was hatched so close to Christmas, however, RTÉ’s television schedule had been finalised, so it was decided that the RTÉ Player would be home between Tuesday next (St. Stephen’s Day) and the end of January.
“I’m really proud of it. It’s not something that we’d usually have the capacity to do in RTÉ because we’re so busy with everything else. I’m just delighted that I had the idea, pushed it and made it happen,” Clara told the .
Having worked with Club Rossie on a number of their fundraising ventures, Clara’s love of Gaelic games and following Roscommon teams has never left her. Five years ago, she joined RTÉ and has been working behind the scenes on a number of high-profile productions, including The Sunday Game alongside coverage of the Six Nations and recent Rugby World Cup.
She often finds herself compiling short, impactful videos to set the scene for a particular sporting occasion, but her latest project, which she describes as a “labour of love”, took her right out of her comfort zone.
“Making a half an hour programme on my own is very different to what I’m used of doing. Editorially, there’s a lot of work that has to go into it that people wouldn’t see from the outside. The lads spoke for 90 minutes, but I had to edit that down to just half an hour,” she outlined.
Having worked on the All-Stars production for the last five years, the idea of getting four well-known GAA personalities around a table to review the season and offer their differing opinions on where the game is going was thrashed out in the meeting rooms around Montrose.
Clara had worked closely with Cavanagh and Keegan on The Sunday Game. A few phone calls later, Connolly and O’Donoghue were soon persuaded to buy into the concept.
“The more we kept talking, the more traction the idea got. I suggested Seán (Cavanagh) and Lee (Keegan) because they have a good rapport with each other, and there’s a bit of devilment in them.
“We decided then to get one from each province. In terms of Leinster, Diarmuid Connolly had just appeared on our GAA club coverage. I didn’t think he was really into media but I gave him a shout and he didn’t hesitate. Given the history between himself and Lee, I thought that would add a little bit to it.
“James O’Donoghue is no stranger to the media either. He’s part of a very successful podcast with Tommy Rooney and the boys on Off The Ball. He’s a good personality and he’s a good talker.
“That was the plan for the All-Stars — get them together and talk about the year. The idea was to make a four-minute package out of it for the show,” she explained.
Clara went on to detail the organisation to bring the four former players into one room to film the programme.
“You’re trying to plan around the lads’ individual schedules. They’re coming from the four parts of the country and you have to try and get them into one place at one time. You need to organise, cameras, sound and location. I needed enough time to edit it as well. So it wasn’t just as simple as ‘let’s all meet up here at the one time’.
“At one stage, I was contemplating shooting it in Roscommon because it was more central but it was just as handy for Lee and James to get to Dublin on the motorway. We actually did it in Croke Park, in the All-Stars suite. It’s a warm room with nice pictures in the background.
“I arranged to meet them there at a specific day and time. I sent them all a brief beforehand in terms of what we needed to touch on. It was more to jog their memory than anything else because it had been a few months since the championship concluded.
“We just set it up, and away they went. They spoke for an hour and a half in total. I only needed four minutes. But there was such good stuff there that I didn’t want it to go to waste. I wanted people to see it. A lot of what they ended up talking about wasn’t relevant to the All-Stars. It was a broader discussion about other issues in the game,” she continued.
After finishing the editing process for the All-Stars, Clara quickly put the building blocks in place to bring to fruition over Christmas.
“I didn’t want to leave the rest of it on the cutting floor. I pitched it to the RTÉ Player to see would they take it because the Christmas schedule for television had already been finalised. People like these end-of-the-year reviews. They want more coverage and talk shows.
“They loved the idea. So then I had to go to my manager and get permission, and be allowed the time to work on it because it was close to the RTÉ Sports Awards, which I would work on every year.
“In order for me to focus on my own programme, I had to be removed from the sports awards for a while. Eventually, we got the green light, so I was allowed to work away at it on my own and get it across the line.”
Without getting into too much detail, Clara reveals that Lee Keegan felt that the Mayo players might have celebrated a little too much on the bus between their league final success and the Connacht championship game against Roscommon a week later. It’s all part of the banter between all four GAA personalities as they look back on 2023.
"Lots of things in the GAA have become sanitised and boring, and we don’t get to see players showing their personality. In this instance, the four lads worked very well together. I’m thrilled with the way it has turned out,” she concluded.
