Gary Mills O'Reilly (born 21 March 1961) is an English former professional footballer who played in

the Football League The English Football League (EFL) is a league of professional football clubs from England and Wales. Founded in 1888 as the Football League, it is the oldest football league in the world, and was the top-level football league in England from ...

for

Tottenham Hotspur Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, commonly referred to as simply Tottenham (, , , ) or Spurs, is a professional Association football, football club based in Tottenham, North London, England. The club itself has stated that it should always ...

Brighton & Hove Albion Brighton & Hove Albion Football Club, commonly referred to as Brighton, is a professional football club based in Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, England. The club competes in the Premier League, the top tier of English football. Their home gr ...

Crystal Palace Crystal Palace may refer to: Places Canada * Crystal Palace Complex (Dieppe), a former amusement park now a shopping complex in Dieppe, New Brunswick * Crystal Palace Barracks, London, Ontario * Crystal Palace (Montreal), an exhibition buildin ...

and

Birmingham City Birmingham City Football Club is a professional football club based in Birmingham, England. Formed in 1875 as Small Heath Alliance, it was renamed Small Heath in 1888, Birmingham in 1905, and Birmingham City in 1943. The team compete in the ...

as a central defender.

Life and career

O'Reilly was born in

Isleworth Isleworth ( ) is a suburban town in the London Borough of Hounslow, West London, England. It lies immediately east of Hounslow and west of the River Thames and its tributary the River Crane, London, River Crane. Isleworth's original area of ...

, now part of

Greater London Greater London is an administrative area in England, coterminous with the London region, containing most of the continuous urban area of London. It contains 33 local government districts: the 32 London boroughs, which form a Ceremonial count ...

. He played for

Grays Athletic Grays Athletic Football Club is a football club based in Grays, Essex, England. They are currently members of the and play at Chadfields in nearby Tilbury. History The club was established as Grays Juniors in 1890, before merging with former ...

before turning professional with

in 1979, and made his debut the following year. After 45 League games for the club, he joined

for a £45,000 fee. He stayed with Brighton for two and a half seasons before moving on to

. He scored in the

1989–90 FA Cup The 1989–90 FA Cup was the 109th season of the world's oldest football knockout competition, The Football Association Challenge Cup, or FA Cup for short. The competition started in September 1989 with the Preliminary Round and continued through ...

semi-final as Palace beat

Liverpool Liverpool is a port City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. It is situated on the eastern side of the River Mersey, Mersey Estuary, near the Irish Sea, north-west of London. With a population ...

4–3

after extra time Overtime (OT) or extra time (ET) is an additional period of play to bring a game to a decision and avoid declaring the match a Tie (draw), tie or draw where the scores are the same. In some sports, this extra period is played only if the game is ...

, and then scored the opening goal in the final, against

Manchester United Manchester United Football Club, commonly referred to as Man United (often stylised as Man Utd) or simply United, is a professional association football, football club based in Old Trafford (area), Old Trafford, Greater Manchester, Engl ...

. The match ended in a 3–3 draw, and Palace lost replay 1–0 five days later. After a brief spell on loan at

, O'Reilly rejoined Brighton & Hove Albion in January 1991. Brighton finished that season sixth in the Second Division and reached the playoff final, where they were beaten by

Notts County Notts County Football Club is a professional association football, football club in Nottingham, England, which competes in EFL League Two, the fourth tier of Football in England, English football, following promotion and relegation, promotion ...

. Any hopes of another promotion challenge the following season – and of a place in the new

FA Premier League The Premier League is a professional association football league in England and the highest level of the English football league system. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the English Football ...

– were quickly forgotten as Brighton found themselves fighting a battle against relegation which was eventually lost. O'Reilly then retired from playing. Following his retirement from football, he made a career in sports broadcasting. He has appeared on BBC Five Live's ''

Fighting Talk ''Fighting Talk'' is a topical sports show broadcast on BBC Radio 5 Live during the English football season. The show is broadcast on Saturday mornings for an hour between 11.00 and 12.00 and is currently presented by Rick Edwards. This show is ...

'', as a pundit on pan-African broadcaster GTV's Saturday morning preview show and Sunday night review show, as a commentator for

Trans World International IMG, originally known as the International Management Group, is a global sports, fashion, events and media company headquartered in New York City. The company manages athletes and fashion celebrities; owns, operates and commercially represents ...

and

Sky Sports Sky Sports is a group of British broadcasting of sports events, subscription sports channels operated by the satellite television, satellite pay television company Sky Group (a division of Comcast), and is the dominant subscription television ...

, and as both pundit and commentator on

UEFA Champions League The UEFA Champions League (UCL) is an annual club association football competition organised by the UEFA, Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) that is contested by List of top-division football clubs in UEFA countries, top-divisio ...

matches for ART Prime Sports, Dubai. From February 2017, O'Reilly and

Chuck Nice Chuck Nice (born July 10, 1975) is an American stand-up comedian, television, and radio personality from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he started his career hosting a show atop a new-wave dance club The Bank. He got his name from DJ Chuck Nic ...

co-hosted the

podcast A podcast is a Radio program, program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. Typically, a podcast is an Episode, episodic series of digital audio Computer file, files that users can download to a personal device or str ...

'' StarTalk'' with

Neil deGrasse Tyson Neil deGrasse Tyson ( or ; born October 5, 1958) is an American astrophysics, astrophysicist, author, and science communication, science communicator. Tyson studied at Harvard University, the University of Texas at Austin, and Columbia Univ ...

Honours

;Tottenham Hotspur *

UEFA Cup The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , , "little star", is a Typography, typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a star (heraldry), heraldic star. Computer scientists and Mathematici ...

: 1983–84

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Oreilly, Gary 1961 births Living people Footballers from the London Borough of Hounslow People from Isleworth English men's footballers Men's association football central defenders Grays Athletic F.C. players Tottenham Hotspur F.C. players Brighton & Hove Albion F.C. players Crystal Palace F.C. players Birmingham City F.C. players UEFA Europa League–winning players English Football League players English association football commentators