About Me

I’m a sports mad Kildare native, staff photographer with Sportsfile and freelance sports writer.

Piaras Ó Mídheach is pronounced Pier-iss O Me-awk – it can be difficult to guess!

Or you can call me POM (as in Tom!)

In the winter of 2013 I joined the Sportsfile staff, which is Ireland’s largest and longest running sports photography agency, based in Dublin, after studying media in college.

Sport is my passion, with hurling and gaelic football being my first sports and I continue to play hurling with Ardclough in Kildare.

Having followed sport through the media growing up, I got my first camera aged 15, a Nikon D50.

I photographed my first match days later, a gaelic football match between Kildare and Longford in the 2006 O’Byrne Cup.

Initially I just wanted to capture some of my own images of my favourite players, but soon I caught the buzz and set on turning a hobby into a career.

After secondary school I went on to graduate with a BA in Photographic Media from Griffith College Dublin, followed by a BA (Hons) in Journalism and Visual Media, also at Griffith.

Subsequently I achieved a Diploma in Sports Journalism from Dublin Business School and shortly afterwards I joined Sportsfile.

This website has a mixture of my favourite photographs that I’ve taken through the years.

While my sports blog gives an insight into the life of a sports photographer and the stories behind some of my favourite pictures.

It also has my take on sporting matters with some of my own sports writing – focusing on hurling, gaelic football and soccer, and a mixture of sports in between.

Yours in Sport,
Piaras

Recent Posts
24th December 2019As the year comes to an end – it’s a nice honour to have some of my photos featured in RTÉ’s Sporting Decade in Pictures, Balls.ie’s favourite sporting photos of the year, Balls.ie’s Top 50 GAA images of the year – and of course Sportsfile’s top 100 photos of the year. GALLERY: The sporting decade in pictures #rtesport https://t.co/0x0bBn5bue— RTÉ Sport (@RTEsport) December 24, 2019 The @sportsfile snappers were on the ball in 2019https://t.co/9sZ9goKOfA— Balls.ie (@ballsdotie) December 19, 2019 Great work from @sportsfile.https://t.co/wgFRjPaE6l— Balls.ie (@ballsdotie) December 23, 2019 Reeling in the Year!We are looking back at some of the biggest moments and unusual images of 2019 – and have picked our favourite 100 photos of the year.Have a look at the link below!https://t.co/IzJCB00GMV#CapturingHistory pic.twitter.com/CGn32p2Mg7— sportsfile (@sportsfile) December 9, 2019 [...]
19th July 2018Great to get into this week’s Getty Images European Sports Pictures of the Week with an image from the Galway v Kerry All-Ireland Quarter-Final game at Croke Park. The Kingdom’s Jason Foley jumping over his Tribesman rival Ian Burke, but Galway went on to claim a famous victory. [...]
16th April 2015Now that the new penalty rule in hurling is in place, 1 on 1, goalkeeper v taker, here’s a look back at the last ever “Nash Penalty“, where the taker could lift the ball from the spot but strike it as close to the goal as they wished. It was the Cork goalkeeper Anthony Nash himself who got the final go at it, in the 2014 Munster SHC Quarter-Final replay against Waterford, with Stephen O’Keeffe racing from his goal to stop the effort. The rule was subsequently changed the following week to disallow players striking the ball from past the line. [...]
31st December 2014  From Croke Park to the Cooley Mountains, from Clones to Dalymount, here’s a selection of my favourite photos from 2014. [...]
21st December 2014  This is a picture I took of a very different looking Croke Park. It was late on Saturday night on the 2nd of August and I was after watching my native Kildare narrowly succumb to Monaghan in an All-Ireland SFC Qualifier after extra-time, having earlier seen Armagh knock Meath out of the championship also. After the players had left the pitch I headed straight into the photographer’s room, under the Hogan Stand, to send a celebration photo of Monaghan captain Conor McManus and then got onto going through the rest of my pics from the day to see what I had left to send. As all the other photographers left I decided to call it a day and remembered I had some things to gather from pitchside. I walked through the player’s tunnel and was greeted by this theatre or stage like setting of Croke Park at nearly ten o’clock at night. There was nobody else around, just a weird silence and calm after a busy day at GAA headquarters. The lights were placed there earlier by ground staff to try and dry the pitch and encourage grass growth ahead of another busy afternoon of football the following day. It gave the famous stadium a very dramatic look, along with the other lights left on in the Cusack stand. I took a few different versions of the scene and raced back into the photographer’s room to send them off quickly. Luckily my colleague Seán O’Flaherty, on the picture desk, back at our office in Portobello, was there to send it out and it got published in Irish Independent and Irish Examiner the following Monday and made Sportsfile’s A Season of Sunday’s 2014. See the full set of Sportsfile Images of 2014 here: https://www.sportsfile.com/more-images/1412028/5000/     [...]
21st September 2014Kerry are top of the pile again after winning yet another All-Ireland Senior Football Championship Final, beating Donegal 2-09 to 0-12. All match pics here: http://www.sportsfile.com/more-images/1409179/5000/ [...]