Irish football fans baffled by Premier League referee’s Dublin accent

Dubliner Dermot Gallagher has long been a familiar face to fans of the Premier League, having refereed in the competition from 1992 until 2007.

Since then, Dermot Gallagher has enlightened Sky Sports viewers on the performances of his colleagues in his regular Ref Watch slot on the channel. While it had been widely known that Gallagher grew up in Ringsend before heading across the water, regular viewers had kind of assumed that he’d been in England long enough for his Dublin brogue to fade away.

Usually, he speaks with a distinct English twang but during an interview on Off The Ball last night, he revealed his real accent and you’d almost think he never left the capital at all.

Gallagher told Joe Molloy, in an unmistakable Dublin lilt, “I have to crank it down a bit with English people. When I first started on Sky TV, they were very conscious of certain words I couldn’t pronounce. Words with ‘th’, I found very difficult, they’d be explaining to me there’s a ‘h’ in the word ‘Thursday!'”

A short clip of the interview went fairly viral last night on both sides of the Irish Sea, with many people baffled by Dermot’s real accent and others just stunned because they had no idea he was Irish at all. Have a listen to the clip below yourself…

"I have to crank it down a bit for English people"

Former Premier League referee Dermot Gallagher on his thick Dublin accent… we never knew!@paddypower pic.twitter.com/oabKVLKj8A

— Off The Ball (@offtheball) February 10, 2021

And compare it with his accent in one of his Ref Watch slots…

Everything we thought we ever knew has been a lie. Dermot Gallagher, everybody – the biggest Dub in England and we never even knew it.

Off The Ball’s full chat with the ex-Premier League referee can be found here.

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