Players lead way in searching for a format that works

IT’S harder to recall blander GAA television than Friday night’s All Star awards.

In other years you at least got the sense the television people were really trying — from Kevin McStay and a panel arguing who should have been on but was left out, to Neil Delamere and Patrick Kielty making Michael Lyster wince but a nation laugh at last year’s bash.

This year there wasn’t a hint of sulphur or fun. It was all very stiff, all very inoffensive, all very oifigiúil; even Dessie Farrell, the figurehead of those former renegades the GPA, seemed right at home observing all the banal formalities alongside Christy Cooney and President Mary McAleese.