Joe Brolly: You either become irrelevant or you accept the reality

Joe Brolly has admitted his desire to get back on television and to feel ‘excited’ again when the producers say ‘five, four, three...’ in his ear was partly why he set aside his long-held beliefs about pay-per-view broadcasters and the GAA.

The Ulster man has been an ardent critic of the GAA’s broadcasting deals with subscription based broadcasters, chiefly Sky Sports, arguing as recently as last summer that placing games behind paywalls means tens of thousands of people in hospitals and nursing homes are being ‘deprived of seeing our games’.