Keeping hard-hitting pundits in check on the Sunday Game

Talking Sport with Stephen Glennon

HAVE you ever become incensed with a remark from one of The Sunday Games analysts, be it Joe Brolly, Pat Spillane, Ger Loughnane or whoever, and thought who has let that man on TV? Well, the answer, plain and simple, is Oranmore native and RTE GAA Executive Editor Paul Byrnes.

Ahead of this week’s All-Ireland senior and minor football finals, Byrnes is at full throttle putting this Sunday’s show together – his only respite a flying visit home to Galway to see his mother Theresa and to check in on the family.

Although “obsessive about sport”, family comes across as very important to him and he traces back his choice of career to the days he would travel with his late dad Tommy and uncle Gabriel Murphy to matches the length and breadth of the county and country.

“That kind of gave me the taste of going to games and meeting players and just being at games and stuff. I always had a huge interest in sport anyway, from playing locally with Oranmore, hurling and football. So, it was a case of how do I get into sport.

“I had always been interested in writing about sport and writing down facts and figures and doing up my own match programmes and counting the wides and frees at matches. It was just something I liked and I just pursued it at college.”

Indeed, after finishing his schooling in Oranmore, Byrnes later completed a degree at the University of Limerick before undertaking the post graduate course in applied media communications at NUI Galway alongside other noted journalists such as ‘The Club’ author Christy O’Connor.

Byrne, who by now was freelancing for media outlets such as The Connacht Tribune, Clare FM and, indeed, the national newspapers, among others, subsequently secured a four-week placement in RTE in May 1997. “You could still say I am on work experience 19 years later,” he laughs.

Initially working as a researcher and a sub editor, he became part of a production team on a variety of sports programmes before working his way up to become a programmes editor and then a series editor. He has now graduated to series editor for all GAA programmes, which includes The Sunday Game. “So, I just worked my way up along,” he explains.

As part of that brief, he is the man responsible for selecting which analysts work on The Saturday Game Live, The Sunday Game Live and, of course, The Sunday Game night-time show. It can often lead to some eventful Monday mornings, particularly if one of the analysts is after going off on one the day before. They have often landed him in hot water.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.