THE SUNDAY GAME will be cut back to a 90-minute show from this weekend onwards.
The GAA’s flagship TV programme returned to RTÉ screens as a two-hour show on Sunday 10 May, with a second episode following last night.
With no live games to broadcast and analyse due to Covid-19 pandemic, the format of the show has been revamped to reflect on classic games while guests contribute to the show remotely.
Rory O’Neill, the producer of the Sunday Game, confirmed to The42 that the show will continue to broadcast in its weekly slot up to July but will be reduced to 90-minute episodes.
“It’s certainly going to be on for the next six to 10 weeks,” says O’Neill. “We are going to be on at 9.30pm every Sunday.
“We had a debrief today and a chat about different things, what worked and what didn’t. We feel going back to an hour and a half is definitely the way to go.
It’s going back to 90 minutes beginning this Sunday coming. In fairness, it’s a lot of time to fill when you’ve no action. It was just an experiment on our part to see if it was something that was workable and something the audience were interested in.”
O’Neill says that this week’s show will focus on camogie with Ladies football coming under the spotlight next week.
GAA president John Horan, who was a studio guest in the first episode of the 2020 series, said it is unlikely that Gaelic games will be played at any level while social distancing in its current form remains in place.
O’Neill says the Sunday Game team will continue to revise the format of the show to keep viewers engaged during the lockdown, but will be alert to any changes should live sport resume in the near future.
“It’s just tightening it up, moving to the hour and a half, I think [that] might help it,” he continues.
“It might be something we’ll need to revisit again depending on what happens down the line. But the big thing is that the Sunday Game will run certainly into July.
After that, it’s very hard for anybody to look that far advanced into the future. Nobody really seems to know. If the prospect of live action were to come back onto the agenda then our focus might have to shift.
“All you can do really is plan for the short and medium term, and let the long term look after itself. It’s a real work in progress and it’s something you’re trying to figure out as you go.”
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