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Scheduling abomination confines hurling championship classics to GAAGO

The Morning Sports Briefing: Keep ahead of the game as Mary Hannigan brings you all the main sports news

Cork fans look on as Patrick Horgan strikes the sliotar during the Rebel County's meeting with Tipperary at Páirc Uí Chaoimh in the Munster SHC on Saturday. Photograph: Ben Brady/Inpho

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Mary Hannigan
Tue May 9 2023 - 11:05

A “scheduling abomination” is how Denis Walsh describes the appearance of the three best hurling games of the year so far on the subscription streaming service GAAGO, rather than on RTÉ's terrestrial channels. Those who missed live coverage of those zingers – Clare v Tipperary, Clare v Limerick and Cork v Tipperary – would, you’d guess, heartily agree.

Picking up on Dónal Óg Cusack’s comments on The Sunday Game, when he accused the GAA of exploiting hurling by putting its most attractive games behind a paywall, Denis argues that while the GAA is entitled to generate income with its streaming service, “what cannot be lost is balance”. Thus far, “hurling has been screwed in the TV scheduling”.

Ian O’Riordan brings some good news for hurling fans, though: the upcoming Kilkenny v Dublin, Clare v Cork and Limerick v Tipperary games will all be on RTÉ. Which means there’s bad news for football fans: among the contests shifted to GAAGO are Kerry v Mayo and Galway v Tyrone.

Happily for the Dublin and Louth faithful, their Leinster final is on RTÉ next Sunday (are you getting as addled as ourselves?), a game that Jim McGuinness suggests Louth manager Mickey Harte will be relishing. It won’t, he says, “faze him one bit”.

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Not one of the 20 games Caelan Doris has played this season has fazed him either, the Leinster and Ireland man ending up on the winning team on each and every occasion. Gerry Thornley talks to him ahead of Leinster’s URC semi-final meeting with Munster next Saturday.

And Gerry also hears from Mack Hansen in the build-up to Connacht’s trip to Cape Town to take on the Stormers in the other semi-final. The winger was sporting a war wound after that clash of heads with team-mate John Porch during their victory over Ulster last weekend, one, he said, has resulted in him having to put his modelling career on hold.

A busy Gerry took time, too, to reflect on Terenure’s most successful season ever, the highlight that triumph over Clontarf last Sunday that earned them their first All-Ireland League title. Owen Doyle, meanwhile, uses his column to plead for consistency from referees, recalling a remark a coach made to him 15 years ago: “I don’t care if they’re all brilliant, or all bloody awful, but please, I just want them to be all the same.”

Telly watch: Real Madrid v Manchester City in the first leg of the Champions League semi-finals? Yes please. RTÉ 2 and BT Sport 1 have live coverage of the clash of the behemoths (kick-off 8.0).