Massey Magazine November 2001

The Sports Man

Sports Broadcaster
Name: Hamish McKay
Qualification: BA

Hamish McKay faces the nation on TV3 several days a week with news and commentary on our national obsession, sport. Sometimes of late, the news has not been good, especially in his chosen speciality, rugby, the nation’s passion.

Not good at all, but, says McKay, he would rather face an electronic audience of thousands with news of a grim defeat than a classroom of 35 real, live 10-year-olds; the job he spent four years training for at Massey.

“That [teaching] is more daunting to me than a quiet studio with an auto cue or the comfort of a commentary box and a possible audience of half a million,” says McKay. “I still do ‘reading week’ or judge speech competitions and every time I do I think teachers do a hell of a job.”

A BA majoring in education and a teaching diploma somehow took McKay, after just one day’s relief teaching, into the groundbreaking Radio 2XS, “the Hauraki of the Manawatu”. Not the expected career path for a newly qualified teacher, he admits, but he had wanted to be a journalist from the start.

“They weren’t taking country boys back then, and you had to be either top of your seventh form in English or a postgrad.”

Throughout his student years McKay had applied to numerous media organisations . He had even taken himself off midway for a six-month polytech journalism course. For practical broadcasting experience, he commentated “into an empty jug at the Fitz for years”.

One day his friends had had enough. They egged him into going down to the local radio station to see about a job. Later, McKay discovered he was known at 2XS as the “Can I see the manager boy” for his boldness. But they gave him local club rugby to cover that weekend, and, after a few weeks, the commentating of provincial games. He stayed three years at 2XS and learnt general, council, court reporting: in other words, the lot, ending up news editor in the two-person newsroom. “Get a job in the provinces” is his advice to up and coming journos, “because you get to do everything”.

During the 2XS stint McKay was making plans. Taking a leaf out of the book of Australian commentator Gordon Bray, he offered to fund his own way on the ’95 All Black Tour of France and Italy for Radio Pacific and IRN on a ‘shoestring budget’ in return for the experience and a raised radio profile. McKay says that was the ‘last great’ tour in terms of rugby reporting. He was in the thick of a media pack of veterans such as Keith Quinn and Ron Palenski and learnt much.

After the ’95 tour a friend got him a job on the London-based worldwide sporting service WTN. Three weeks later, nicely set up in London, just over the “I can’t believe my luck” phase, McKay got a call from New Zealand. “It was from Touchdown Productions. I had sent off tapes and they had auditioned me about three years earlier. They offered me the Time of Your Life travel show. The rest, as we all know, is history. McKay ditched the WTN job, returned home and became a household name on the show he describes as “the best OE in your own country anyone could ever have”.

Early in 1999 Hamish joined TV3 full time, where he counts commentating this season’s test matches as the biggest moment of his career “by a long shot”. Rugby remains his focus, with racing and tennis also interests. He played rugby socially with the Massey alumni team, the Grizzly Bears, up until two years ago.

As the game becomes global he believes immense opportunities will open up. The four years spent gaining teaching qualifications haven’t gone astray. Even though a live audience of children is not for him, he sees teaching and reporting as similar skills. They each interpret and illuminate life’s facets.