The courteous voice of Irish sport

But there's also an atmosphere that accompanies him, a reverence for both the games he describes and Irish culture in general, plus an unfailing courtesy towards his listener.

Micheal, as he is known throughout Ireland, has been described as "a true Irish gentleman". The person he reminds me of is the great Irish poet Seamus Heaney who died last year.

Micheal describes Heaney, the Nobel laureate, as "a sort of simple man" who was never full of his own importance. "He remained an ordinary man." Micheal remains an ordinary man.

Micheal O Muircheartaigh (Irish for Michael Moriarty) is pronounced Mihol O'Murraherty. He was born 84 years ago in a part of county Kerry where both English and Irish were spoken.

Irish, he says, is his stronger language. In 1949, while a student teacher, he applied for an audition as a radio commentator at hurling matches.

As he tells the story, his stroke of good luck that day was that a young man he knew was prominent in the section of play he was required to call. Micheal not only described the play, he interspersed it with details about where the young man was from and his family.

A distinctive style was born, one particularly suited to radio but which more than held its own on Irish TV.

Here is an example of what is known in Ireland as a "Michealism":  "Pat Fox out to the 40 and grabs the sliothar. I bought a dog from his father last week. Fox turns and sprints for goal … the dog ran a great race last Tuesday in Limerick … Fox, to the 21, fires a shot - it goes to the left and wide … and the dog lost as well."  It is not merely humorous; it's a different view of sport.

I caught Micheal as he was passing through Melbourne on his way to Perth for the Ireland v Australia combined rules game. I asked him what sport means to him. He answered by reference to the Gaelic games which, in addition to being amateur, are local and communal in their appeal.

"For a start, it's a pastime for so many people. It's a chance for a small group to be on the national stage, but it's also the best of one region pitted against the best of another. The players are special people in one sense but ordinary people, too. The games are very sternly fought but there is an overall belief that fairness should prevail."

One of Micheal's habits has always been to get to know the players as best he could, not only as players but as people - where they were from, their families, what they did for work.

He always enjoyed the build-up to a big game, visiting the counties involved in matches and talking to the ordinary people, finding out "what slant they had on it".

He retired in 2010 but still goes to as many matches as before. "I get as much of a kick out of it now as I ever did." He believes commentators who don't get a kick out of the sport they're calling should be doing something else.

Hurling is his favourite Irish game. His favourite non-Irish game is Australian football and he recalls the excitement in Ireland when the first Australian team visited in 1967. "We had seen photos of the magnificent leaping by the Australian rules players but we knew very little about them."

The Australians played Meath, the All-Ireland champions. "There was such a clamour about them. They seemed very athletic and they had a great way of stretching into the air." He frowned and added, "They don't seem to do that as much any more."

We then had a discussion about the  defensive nature of so much modern coaching and the question of whether they can coach creativity.

I thought the interview would last an hour or so. After nearly three hours, we were still talking - about Aboriginal football, about Collingwood, about the early history of hurling (it is more than 1000 years old) and its place in the Irish psyche.

I asked him the highlight of his long career. In reply, he told me of the day he took a group of blind people who listened to his radio commentaries on a guided tour of Croke Park. "Passionate listeners of radio have their own images of the games. As we were walking around, this lady said, 'I would love to stand where Anthony Daly stood when he hit the vital score'."

Daly captained Clare in 1995 when it won its first All-Ireland hurling title since 1914. "I had a good idea of where he was standing, so I took her out and said, 'This is the place'."

Micheal took the same group to the goal net and let them grip it in their hands, the net they imagined the ball crashing into in some long ago match that still lived in their minds because of his call. The highlights of his career, he said, "are little things like that".