TG4's much-loved Seó Spóirt set for a return after five years

Presenter Dara Ó Cinnéide says the games and those that play them will remain the focus of the much-admired show when it returns to TG4 early next month after a five year absence

Thu, 05 May, 2022 - 11:05

John Fogarty

The games and those that play them will remain the focus of the much-admired Seó Spóirt when it returns to TG4 early next month, says presenter Dara Ó Cinnéide.

Making a welcome return after a five-year absence, Kerry’s 2004 All-Ireland SFC winning captain says the sports talk show will stick to the tried and trusted formula which won many admirers, while reflecting what has changed about Gaelic games and its media in the interim.

Two months ago, TG4 sought expressions of interest for a Friday night sports programme, which prompted the Seó Spóirt team to get talking.

“We had a decent enough formula but obviously the games have changed, the way people talk and analyse them have, the ways of presenting the games have as well,” says three-time All-Ireland SFC winner Ó Cinnéide.

“The basics of what we were about haven’t changed, though. For us, the games and the players are front and centre and nothing else. I won’t say we’re an agenda-setter but there is a massive hole there that has been filled by very decent podcasts and other things but on a Friday night you want to be talking and seeing things about the games ahead.

“Sometimes as a GAA person you’d be asking yourself ‘why isn’t there more meat to chew on at this time of the week?’ So, we have an opportunity to do that on the same platform again and I imagine there will be more emphasis on social media this time too.”

Regional manager in Raidió na Gaeltachta, the show will involve Ó Cinnéide taking the almost eight-hour return drive from his home in West Kerry to the TG4 studio in Baile na hAbhann in Connemara on Fridays but he can't wait.

“I did it for nine or 10 years and got into a rhythm. The Friday up and down was about thinking and talking about the games and tuned me in for an hour’s discussion. As Mick O’Dwyer used to say, it’d usually take you two hours to get out of Kerry anyway, so you don’t mind driving. I’m looking forward to it and putting that skin on me every Friday. As a pundit, not just a presenter, you’d be getting excited.”

Running from the start of next month in time for the Munster and Leinster SHC finals to the All-Ireland ladies football finals at the end of July, Ó Cinnéide knows the programme will have to hit the ground running as the GAA inter-county season reaches the business end.

“We were very fortunate that in the years we had previously some of the biggest names were fluent Irish speakers like Ciarán Kilkenny, Tomás Ó Sé, Gary Brennan and Ger Loughnane. They were doing it in a casual setting too and hopefully we can recreate that and we will have an appetite for it still.”

*Seó Spóirt returns to TG4 on Friday, June 3.