TV3 winning the rights ball game

Last week RTÉ screened a documentary about this year’s All-Ireland football final, a peek behind the scenes in the run-up to Dublin-Kerry clash as well as a look at the main stage, when players ‘engaged’ with referee David Coldrick about his handling of the game.

There was the usual call for more of this kind of thing — from this quarter as loudly as anywhere else — but those calls were overtaken by another development later in the week, when TV3 confirmed it had beaten RTÉ to the rights to the Six Nations Championship.

RTÉ Head of Sport Ryle Nugent looked deeply unhappy, unsurprisingly enough, when confirming same on the main evening news, saying RTÉ had done its best but come up short.