'Sunday Game' celebrates 30th season on the airwaves

NEWS ROUND-UP:RTÉ have celebrated the launch of the 30th season of The Sunday Gamewith some details of this summer's coverage. The full schedule of live matches is expected today or early next week, but the traditional Sunday evening programme is back on air from the weekend after next.

The programme began in 1979 as a highlights package and was initially presented by Jim Carney. When live broadcasting was finally accepted by the GAA in 1996, the Sunday Game Livebecame the vehicle for live coverage.

Michael Lyster will be presenting for a 25th year with the programme, continuing to front the live programme with Pat Spillane presenting on Sunday evenings.

This will be the first year RTÉ will have to share live broadcasting rights with another Irish terrestrial broadcaster. TV3 have acquired a package of 10 matches, details of which were announced recently.

According to The Sunday Game's Paul Byrnes, there won't be any clashes between RTÉ's live coverage and TV3's. "We're not going up against each other," he said. "Our contracts specified that, and anyway it wouldn't make much sense for either of us. On the days when we've a match each the transmission times will be 2pm and 4pm, to be decided each week."

He said agreeing the schedules hadn't been a problem. "There was a feeling that it might have proved difficult, but once we sat down with the GAA and TV3 it turned out to be very straightforward."

RTÉ also announced that there will be a dedicated web channel for championship action: the GAA Media Player will include all of the station's output, including live matches. The Sunday Game, Take Your Point(the post-match radio discussion programme with Con Murphy) and The Road to Croker(the magazine and interview show presented by Des Cahill) will be available on demand.

This year The Sunday Gameseries will feature enhanced technology and some new panellists. Piero is described as "a brand new, state-of the-art analysis tool", which has been specifically devised for analysing Gaelic games and will include player tracking, measuring the distance to posts and the speed of the ball.

The panels will include newcomers Coman Goggins, the former Dublin captain and All Star who has plenty of broadcasting experience with TG4, and recently retired hurlers Declan Ruth from Wexford and former Clare goalkeeper David Fitzgerald.

• TV3 will have three All-Ireland-winning managers among their analysts for their live championship matches. Eugene McGee, who managed the Offaly team which denied Kerry a five-in-a-row, will provide football expertise, whereas hurling panellists will include Nicky English and Liam Griffin.

English managed Tipperary to their last MacCarthy Cup in 2001, whereas Griffin brought to an end the 28-year Wexford famine by winning the 1996 All-Ireland.