The voice of Irish sport for generations

Legendary RTÉ sports commentator Jimmy Magee has died aged 82 after a life spent bringing sporting events from around the world to listeners and viewers in Ireland.

In a career spanning 59 years he commentated on a huge variety of sports, including eleven World Cups and ten Olympic games.

Simple and powerful, Jimmy’s description of Maradona’s magic goal against England at the 1986 World Cup provided perhaps his most famous line.

"Enrique to Maradona. Ah, different class. Different class! Maradona. Diego Amando Maradona! He's on the World Cup pedestal."

Born in New York on 4 February, 1935, he was brought up on the Cooley Peninsula in County Louth. He wrote many letters to Radio Eireann before starting work with the station in Dublin’s GPO in 1956.

"When I was young, eight, nine ten, I used to do a programme called Sunday Sport out in the back garden," he explained. 

"I did the sig(nature) tune, all the reports, the league tables, kept it going and my grandfather thought I was crazy. A neighbour used to say to my mother and father, ‘your Jimmy is going to end up being a footballer'.

"I figured early on that if I wasn’t going to be an active sportsman it would be better to be involved in commentary. For a very simple reason - footballers come and go. Commentators, they go on for ever and ever."

Through World Cup finals, his first for radio in 1966 to his last in 2010, and Olympic Games, from ’68 to ’12 when he commentated of Katie Taylor’s famous boxing gold medal winning fight, he was happiest behind the microphone.

In the mid-nineties he worked for UTV, fulfilling a lifelong ambition to commentate on an All-Ireland final.

The following year he was at the Atlanta Olympics and would later draw criticism for his continued support of