Mr. Tom Ryan:

Very briefly, the all-Ireland finals people would be familiar with used to be on the first and third weekends of September. They are now in July. That is to free up the latter part of the year for club activities. That has a concertina effect and means more and more games are played in the first half of the year. As well as that, we have changed the competition structure such that the senior football is now played on a round-robin basis. We have more games than ever before in a shorter time period than ever before. That is relevant to broadcasting because it makes it harder to show everything people want to see. There was one weekend at the start of June, if I recall correctly, where for the first time ever every one of the counties was playing. That had never happened before. That illustrates how we, no matter how many partners we have, could not physically show every game that was on. They were championship matches people would have wanted to see. I do not know whether that was a quirk of things or if it may well happen again next year. I am a real advocate of the way the season has been reshaped but one of the consequences is that it causes pressure from a broadcasting point of view.