DON’T TOUCH THAT remote.
That’s the message to Croke Park from RTÉ’s sports chief.
Ryle Nugent, the head of sport in Montrose, says The Sunday Game doesn’t ‘set the agenda’ for gaelic games.
Over the past few seasons the station’s much-loved flagship highlights show has been at the centre of several disciplinary rows. Pundits on the famous couch have highlighted off-the-ball incidents which have initially gone unpunished, only for the CCCC to follow up on the footage.
Nugent however, told Brendan O’Brien, that the association’s agenda is not set from Montrose.
“I think that can be overstated,” said Ryle Nugent yesterday.
“The Sunday Game tends to be the first port of call to reaction that’s happening around the country on a Sunday evening. I don’t believe for one second that if we didn’t do it on a Sunday evening it wouldn’t be done on a Monday or a Tuesday in most cases.
“We are front and centre because we get first bite of the cherry at it, but that doesn’t mean people wouldn’t have similar or differing opinions based on what they saw themselves on a Monday morning or a Tuesday morning.”
Writing in the Irish Independent this week, GAA commentator Billy Keane, lashed the ‘RTÉ editors and ‘Four Cs’.
Kerry’s Paul Galvin and Cork’s Eoin Cadogan were banned after an incident was highlighted on the programme last June. Galvin was hit with a retrospective, eight-week ban after Sunday Game analyst Anthony Tohill described the ‘fish-hook’ incident as ‘unacceptable’.
Keane wrote this week: “The 2011 All-Ireland football championship could well be decided in an editing suite in RTÉ. The editors will select some off-the-ball incidents for the evening news. There will be a follow-up on ‘The Sunday Game’.
“The next morning the papers will be full of after-shock. That evening the GAA, through the ‘Four Cs’, will announce an inquiry. A couple of days later, the players involved will be told they are banned for three months. And so the best footballers, who are usually the ones targeted by the opposition, are out of most of the championship.
“Kerry were singled out last year. No doubt about that.”
Do you agree?
Read Brendan O’Brien’s piece in the Irish Examiner here | Read Billy Keane’s opinion piece in the Irish Independent
