How RTÉ goes from showing nine Munster SHC games in 2019 when Sky Sports was a media partner of the association to six this year can’t be explained by scheduling alone. In 2022, the last year of the Sky partnership, the season before GAAGO replaced it, RTÉ again broadcasted nine live Munster SHC matches. In 2022, just as they did five years ago, Sky televised one live Munster SHC fixture in contrast to the four that were streamed on GAAGO in 2024.
Five years ago, RTÉ were so put off by the provincial football championships that they chose just one game outside the finals. That number has increased just as terrestrial coverage of the Ulster SFC has with BBC coming on board.
It’s 13 years since RTÉ TV’s slice of the championship was sliced from 40 to 31 games. Croke Park felt attendances were being impacted by the number of televised matches and so the national broadcasters’ portion was cut. That 31 number hasn’t changed despite two overhauls of the All-Ireland SFC and another of hurling’s provincial competitions that had ballooned the volume of fixtures.
In 2014, the first year of the Sky deal, RTÉ’s 31 games represented just over 38% of the two senior championships. Ten years on and their portion has been shrinkflated to less than 30% (excludes Tailteann and Joe McDonagh Cup).
It came of great comfort to supporters that every Sam Maguire and Liam MacCarthy game was screened or streamed. What the GAA in conjunction with RTÉ and Sky were able to do for people in that time of distress and upheaval was simply wonderful. As eerie and surreal as those games were, played out in front of empty stands and terraces, with a taste of summer they helped the country winter out the most trying winter.
Covering a truncated 30-game knock-out SFC and 17-game backdoor SHC, 24 were shown on RTÉ, another 12 free on GAAGO in Ireland and Sky made its 14 games, eight of them exclusive, available to all their customers. And just as the pandemic presented the opportunity of the split season to the GAA, in that time of difficulty both GAA and RTÉ recognised the potential of GAAGO while we got too used to a good thing.
In revealing that the GAA cherry-pick games for GAAGO, president Jarlath Burns gave away the worst kept secret in the organisation. He also contradicted director general Tom Ryan’s comments in front of an Oireachtas committee last July: “It is not fair, and it has been characterised as such in the past a little, to say that RTÉ or the GAA pick which games to show. We do not pick games based on revenue.”
So the GAA does have some explaining to do. We can deduce Cork-Limerick was one of them seeing as how Cork’s previous two championship games were highlighted by GAAGO head Noel Quinn last December as games that otherwise wouldn’t have been shown on any medium.
The reality is the GAA don’t want to make money; they need to. Stadiums are falling into disrepair, centre of excellences have to be built (Munster Rugby’s plans for such a facility in Cork as the GAA in the county remains without one hasn’t gone unnoticed) and integration is going to cost an arm and leg despite what some people would have you believe.
Electioneering it certainly is but the political pile-on against the GAA’s use of GAAGO occurred 12 months ago too. It doesn’t bode well for the GAA’s hopes for their All-Ireland quarter-finals not to be included on the Government’s free-to-air list.
The recent meeting with Minister for Public Expenditure Pascal Donohue that Burns spoke about on RTÉ Radio eight days ago we can guess had something to do with the cost of integration, which the GAA hope to justify with their commissioned economic impact and social value study that will be published later this year. The optics of disenfranchising community as they look for millions are not helpful.
The annual subscription, whether it is €79 or the €69 early bird offer, is of course value for money. Even if the camera work is iffy at times, the production is generally strong and the presenters and commentators are high quality.
The issue is seeing and hearing their best work depends on good broadband, which not everyone has or is capable of utilising. We’ve made this point before but it’s worth repeating – for an organisation often slammed as being too slow, the GAA moved too quick with GAAGO much like they did with their cashless ticket policy. Now they have been compelled to set up a hotline for supporters who may have difficulty purchasing tickets online. May we see a similar compromise re GAAGO?
One All-Ireland title may have come for Tipperary in the five years of the Munster SHC round-robin format but their total record in it reads like a patient’s chart: Played 19, Won 5, Drawn 5, Lost 9.
Liam Cahill points out that the reckoning Cork subjected Tipperary to on Sunday made it obvious that “a real rebuild job” is required. Truth is, the county have been treading water for years and as the seasons pass what Liam Sheedy did in bringing them to an All-Ireland in 2019 will be recognised more as a truly great feat. Not without some luck of course, but an achievement.
Where to now is the obvious question. Tipperary have to realise their difficulties predated Cahill and he has brought some much under-age joy to the county. At the same time, it will be difficult to separate what has happened this season and the tail-end of last year from how under the Ballingarry man’s watch Waterford fell so suddenly in his final season with them.
Brendan Cummins, Darragh Egan and Eoin Kelly would be candidates should the Tipperary executive choose to look elsewhere but then officers need to look at themselves as well and ask some uncomfortable questions. Why has the support fallen off despite some reasonable results? Why weren’t Billy O’Shea’s visionary commercial recommendations implemented? Why have the county let FBD Semple Stadium become such a drain on their resources?
Tipperary are the only county to claim an All-Ireland in every decade since the inception of the GAA in 1884. The closest they came to losing that proud record was in the 1980s when Babs Keating worked the oracle in ’89. That record is in great peril.
Cork may not have suffered a defeat as humbling in size as what they meted out to Tipperary in Thurles but they know hurt. They too realise under-age progress doesn’t translate so easily to senior level, which will temper Tipperary hopes in a week their U17 and U20s compete in provincial finals.
It won’t be just Galway’s loss if Damien Comer’s spell on the sidelines is any longer than a game. Gaelic football will be the poorer for his absence too. If there is nobody like Alan Connolly in hurling right now, a fit Comer is a mold breaker in the bigger ball game.
Credit to the forward for playing on despite that egregious act by Gareth McKinless against him in the first half of Saturday’s All-Ireland SFC round game but at what expense did he continue?
“He got a nasty stamp in the ankle so…” started his manager Pádraic Joyce.
“He got on with that but it just gave way in the end there now. It was a horrendous thing to do, but there’s nothing we can do about it now.”
Less than 12 months ago in the same Salthill venue in the same half of the field, Ryan O’Donoghue made contact with Seán Kelly’s troublesome ankle although he faced no sanction. Speaking in January, O’Donoghue said: “That was in the past, whatever happens on the pitch stays on the pitch and that was dealt with at the time and everyone has moved on from it now.”
The problem for the GAA is it can’t when such incidents keep repeating. In March, Roscommon’s Cathal Heneghan was handed a retrospective one-match ban for making contact with Kerry defender Jason Foley’s ankle as he, like Comer, lay on the ground.
The length of McKinless’s punishment will be interesting to note but seeing as how stamping shows no sign of being stamped out GAA authorities may have to raise the penalty for one of the most condemnable transgressions.
