Sarah Mulkerrin’s voice fizzes with excitement at the prospect of covering her three favourite sports for TV over one manic week.

The Athenry native is the presenter of the BBC Northern Ireland’s GAA coverage for the second year running.

Her action-packed week tees off with golf commentary for two days at The Open in Royal Troon (Thursday, 18 July and Friday, 19 July) before she hotfoots it to London for the final Diamond League athletics meeting on Saturday.

Then of course, there’s the small matter of the All-Ireland Hurling Final between Cork and Clare in Croke Park on Sunday, 21 July. And that’s before we even talk about the big one yet to come – the Olympics in Paris.

The Galway broadcaster is “very excited” and is just keeping her “fingers crossed” that there will be some Irish success over in France, and she’ll be there, trackside, to talk to the athletes for the BBC.

“I’ve been very lucky that I’ve been able to work on the sports that I love and at the big events around them,” Sarah says, and lucky is a word she repeats again and again through our conversation.

It’s clear she loves what she does and feels very fortunate to be gracing our TV screens.

While a self-confessed “townie,”  Sarah grew up in Athenry, Co Galway, and spent plenty of time over weekends and holidays in her mother’s homeplace on a farm in Oranmore.

Sporty family

Coming from a “sporty family,” she recalls that many of the family’s big days out were to matches – camogie and hurling – following Athenry and Galway in hurling and football on the big days, alongside her sisters Claire and Eiméar.

Her mother Bernie had played camogie and her father Séamus played golf, so it’s no surprise that Sarah followed in their footsteps, enjoying to play both sports.

She also loved athletics, despite not being that good at it. “I was obsessed with athletics, and I think I was lucky it was in Sonia [O’Sullivan’s] time.

She was competing on the big stage, so that obviously helped, having someone competing, being a World Champion, and going to the Olympics,” recalls Sarah.

From her youth, Sarah was fascinated with TV and made it her mission in her teens to get into the industry.

After studying communications in DCU, her first role was working on RTÉ’s Ear to the Ground as a production assistant, something that proved to be great training.

She later moved to Athena Media, a small production company based in Dublin, run by Helen Shaw, the former head of RTÉ Radio.

The two were making documentaries, when Sarah suddenly realised that many of her pitches were about sport, and women in sport, in particular.

After making a series for Setanta Sports, she got offered a role as an assistant producer, a job that she admits gave her the grounding in putting live shows together, and towards the end of her time there, she moved into reporting.

Having applied to the BBC numerous times, Sarah says she was then “just lucky” to get a six-month gig working on a soccer programme with BBC North West.

So in January 2011, she packed up her life in Dublin and made the big move to Manchester. Two years ago, she bought a house there and is currently in the middle of renovating it.

Her timing proved extremely fortunate because, at the same time, BBC Sport made the move from London to Manchester, and she was in the slipstream of many new opportunities.

As well as regular slots over the years presenting sports news on radio and TV for BBC World and 5 Live Radio, she has popped up on Match of the Day, the Women’s World Cup, and more recently reporting for BBC Sport on golf, athletics and football.

Event highlights

Covering some of the biggest events on the planet has been a dream come true for the sports fanatic, and when asked for her standouts, she opts for two.

The first is Shane Lowry winning The Open at Royal Portrush back in 2019, when she was working on commentary for Five Live Radio.

“I think that was just such a special moment because it was golf, it was on the island of Ireland, and it was Shane Lowry. I just remember the sound being the most distinctive thing; the cheer of the crowd reminded me of being at a hurling or football match. It was a very distinctive Irish roar.”

Her second highlight is her first Olympics in Rio in 2016, which she describes as “everything I ever wanted to achieve” and an amazing experience.

“For me, the Olympics were everything growing up, and I watched them religiously,” says the broadcaster. To get the opportunity to work for BBC World Service in Brazil meant everything to her.

A year and a half ago, Sarah opted to go freelance to “change things up a bit,” and thankfully, despite the worries of leaving a secure staff job, it has worked out.

Sarah is doing many of the jobs she was doing previously but has the added flexibility of other gigs like event hosting and seminars, which she enjoys.

GAA summer

Getting the call to host BBC Northern Ireland’s GAA coverage last year was a “real surprise” for her, but something that has brought her immense joy working on the sports she grew up with and spent her childhood playing.

“It’s a real family one, and it has a special place in my heart in terms of what the GAA means to everybody. I was amazed and delighted to have an opportunity to actually work on it again.”

Interestingly, 2023 was also the first time ever that the BBC broadcast the All-Ireland final nationally to their full UK audience, garnering similar audience figures to RTÉ, while the pundits and overall production have earned very positive reviews.

The Galway native’s family are thrilled, and it was special for her to be able to bring them to the Ulster Final this year and show them behind the scenes. “They are proud of me and very supportive. But they keep me grounded as well, which is good,” she says.

Back in April, she was praised for how she dealt with an impromptu visitor crashing her live coverage.

It happened at half-time of Donegal’s win over Tyrone as a GAA For All match for people with additional needs was taking place.

During her pitchside interview, a participant wandered over into the shot and took her microphone. She laughed if off and told audiences about this great young man and the match happening behind her, as a colleague got her a replacement.

“I love it. I love live broadcasting. I don’t want to jinx myself by saying I love when things go wrong, but there is a bit of fun in that.

“I think that’s the lovely thing about our team covering the GAA – we have an awful lot of fun. It’s great craic; we’d be joking all the time off-air, and we try to bring that on-air.”

With the GAA season coming to a close, Sarah finds it hard to call the winners in both codes with the big guns, Dublin, Kerry and Limerick, now gone.

But with her native county now in the final, she jokes the Galway jersey might come out from under the desk yet!

The growth of women’s sport: “I love that my nieces now watch the Ireland women’s soccer team on TV and they know their names, I didn’t have that growing up. But I also love that a lot of my friends have young boys and they are Man Utd fans and they watch the Man Utd women’s team as much as the men’s team."

Online trolling: “There’s been moments where I’ve been in high profile scenarios and I’ve come off, and opened up Twitter to do some research. There have been notifications and comments, and suddenly, as much you can intellectualise and rationalise it, it can still get you depending on your emotions in that scenario."

Events left to cover: “I’d love to do a men’s World Cup, I did the women’s World Cup in 2019 in France and that was amazing. I’d love to do the men’s World Cup just to get that experience and see how that goes."