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LAST UPDATE | 12 May 2022
Daragh Brophy reports from Turin, Italy:
IRELAND’S BROOKE SCULLION will hit the stage tonight at Turin’s cavernous PalaOlimpico hoping to snatch one of ten remaining slots in Saturday’s Eurovision final.
The bookies aren’t giving the Derry singer much of a chance – but the Irish camp will be hoping the experience she’s picked up in the regular rehearsals and dress rehearsals over the past two weeks in the city will give her the boost she needs to make it through from tonight’s second semi-final.
They’ve been working on the staging too, in the past few days. Show producers are literally promising fireworks.
The 23-year-old, from the village of Bellaghy, is previously best known as a finalist on the UK edition of The Voice but also made a memorable, if fleeting, contribution to the famous ‘Protestants’ episode of Derry Girls.
Along with contestants from the rest of the continent (and Australia) she’s been in the northern Italian city since the start of the month, throwing herself into the well-oiled Eurovision machine of run-throughs, press work and fan events.
She’s very popular with the fans. Some Irish supporters who spoke to The Journal outside the venue tonight said they’d met her more than once in recent days and that she’d been more than generous with her time.
They’re hoping her confidence and hard work pay off tonight – but either way, Brooke’s promising to make the most of the her time in the spotlight.
“It’s insane, it’s absolutely crazy,” she said yesterday as the final dress rehearsals took place.
“I am prepared and I know exactly what I’m doing, but it’s also the unknown.”
Ireland will perform tenth of 18 tonight, effectively kicking off the second half of the show. Depending on which expert you talk to, that placing in the running order either verges on the kiss of death or represents a golden opportunity.
For what it’s worth, the Eurovision afficionados who crunch the numbers on this sort of thing reckon second, third or fourth slot in a semi-final running order gives you the least possible chance of breaking through to home voters. The opening slot’s not too bad and the closing one is the most sought-after.
Of course, a really strong song and a memorable performance can transcend even the least desirable timeslot. There are more than a few really strong songs coming up tonight, as it happens – which of course might well make Ireland’s uphill battle steeper still.
For instance, Cornelia Jakobs’ slickly-produced Swedish entry Hold Me Closer is pretty much guaranteed one of the finalist places up for grabs – ditto the November-Rain-meets-early-Justin-Timberlake stylings of Poland’s Ochman.
Elswhere in the line-up, the Cypriot entry - Ela, by Andromache - is exactly the sort of Mediterranean-tinged summer ballad that tends to do well at Eurovision, and Estonia’s – of all things - Spaghetti Western-themed banger is, well, just a lot of fun.
Overwhelming favourites Ukraine were among the qualifiers from Tuesday’s contest – making the grade alongside Switzerland, Armenia, Iceland, Lithuania, Portugal, Geece, Moldova, the Netherlands and a particularly bonkers entry from Norway.
They’ll be lining up alongside the ‘Big Five’ Eurovision countries – the UK, Italy, Spain, Germany and France – who always get a bye straight into Saturday’s final as their national broadcasters pony up most of the cash for the contest.
In the event that you’re interested in voting – as always with Eurovision these days it’s a complicated system so it’s best not to get into the weeds: the results are decided by a 50:50 combination of jury and viewer votes.
The juries have already cast their votes based on the dress rehearsal performances. Viewers in countries taking part in each semi-final can vote in their respective heat, meaning Irish viewers can have their say tonight.
As always, you can’t vote for your own entry – but handily enough considering we’ve an entrant from Derry, viewers in the North can vote for Brooke as the UK has been assigned to this particular semi-final, even though they’re not competing (told you it was complicated).
The televoting opens as soon as the last singer performs (it’s the Czech Republic tonight) and the window stays open for 15 minutes. The scores from the juries are given first, after which the results from the televoting are added to give each country its combined score – the proceedings usually provide a satisfyingly dramatic conclusion to the show.
So it’s all to be decided. It all kicks off at 8pm Irish time. So far the only Irish voice we’re guaranteed to hear on Saturday night is that of Marty Whelan who marks his 87th consecutive year on commentary duty for RTÉ.*
Daragh Brophy will be in Turin covering the Song Contest up until the early hours of Sunday morning. Check out his feed on Twitter for more. *Yes this is a joke, not a typo.
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Not a chance I’d say.
@Dave Barrett: as always I’d say
@Dave Barrett: they just haven’t taken us seriously since we sent the turkey
I honestly think it’s the best chance we’ve had in years. Not my cuppa but I think it fits with Eurovision. That said, there’s are a lot of quieter/heartfelt songs are in the competition this year, so maybe we’re too late to the party with this upbeat number. Either way, best of luck to the Irish team tonight.
@Sean Ryan: the winner is decided already and it’s the Ukraine
@Jason Walsh: hopefully the best song wins.
@Jason Walsh: almost certainly the winners but we just want to be involved on Saturday at this stage!
@Sean Ryan: that hasn’t happened in years!
Best of luck to her but can’t see us qualifying with all the neighbouring countries in this semi voting for each other as usual. Nobody gives a fook about Ireland anymore.
@Terry Fagan VO: not since we sent a turkey to represent us in a European institution. The world just didn’t see it the way we did…
@The Divils Avocado: because we did so well in the years previous to that? I’d count Dustin as our most successful in the past 20 years
@Terry Fagan VO: the last 10 winners have been from Italy, Sweden (twice), Denmark, Israel, austria, Netherlands, Portugal and Ukraine. This idea that it’s all eastern block countries voting for eachother is bull. We don’t get in because usually our songs aren’t good/quirky/fun/imaginative enough.
@Augustus hoop: You’d be derided for saying this, but the quality of ‘most’ songs in Eurovision has improved so much in recent years (last year being a perfect example) that the best twenty are often way better than the corresponding chart top twenty. Sadly, we haven’t moved with the progress that’s been made and still appear stuck in an eighties time warp.
@Declan Edward: dustin was a disaster, its the only time I’ve seen a entry get booed. We sent a in joke that the other nations didn’t get. It seemed funny but was so so bad.
I wonder when the penny will finally drop that Eurovision isn’t about gimmicks, former boy band members, reality tv stars, former winners, internationally unknown Irish superstars, token di-diddily-di music, living in the past, selection format etc etc.
It’s all about the song.
It doesn’t matter how it’s selected or who sings it, if the song is a cracker you’ll do well.
@Stanley Marsh: but how do we get a decent song? If this year’s entry is the best of the hundreds that applied then the quality of Irish songwriting is woeful
Awful song. We need to go back to the public vote model
@Bananaquit: without public vote this song wouldn’t have been selected….it was losing….
@Gareth Miskelly: hmm so the public and juries pick rubbish. We need a new method. Grab the nearest busker on grafton street maybe? I wouldn’t mind if we even did middling these days but we hardly ever even qualify, it’s embarrassing.
@Bananaquit: the problem isn’t public voting…..it’s the fact that they’re all pretty much sh*te so you’re not left with much choice.
Unfortunately it’s a dreadful song . Of course there is an element of political voting but a great song will still get through .The truth is , all our songs for the last decade have been very poor
She performed very well ,Fairplay to her
@Alyson Sean O’Neill: well she is shortening in the bookies odds! But might have a chance.
Best of luck, the aul’ bloc voting is a killer though. If uk didn’t get the automatic spot they would be snookered too.
@A$AP Ragnick: read the comment above by Augustus.
Ukraine will win!
Not my cup of tea. Best wishes to them. Don’t think they will get anywhere though unfortunately. But I’d love to see Ireland back in
Yeah good luck scull!
Let’s be honest – 50% of Eurovision votes are geographic/geopolitical voting. The other 50% is for the song. You can have the best song and still lose.
But I hope this year it is actually political and Ukraine gets the win in a vote of solidarity. Their song was pretty catchy too to be fair.
Good song but whoever the heck was doing the mix could’ve done so much more with the recording and music. Might make tonight Crowd loved her but I wouldn’t say will make it further because it’s just not enough
She would make a good duo with Johnny Logan (only messin )
She’ll get through. The other songs are shi
Not that I was ever a major fan of Eurovision, but there was a time you had real musicians and/or an orchestra in front playing live with the singers. Looking at the clips above now it’s just a karaoke competition using manufactured backing tracks.
What you need to know: nothing nada zilch.
Me thinks Poland might have this one
have your say