TV3 yesterday unveiled their line-up for their first year of live championship coverage. Full details are contained in this gushing press release and an at times quite witty critique of the station’s choice of presenter, pundits and commentators is available on this thread at gaaboard.com.

Much of the criticism surrounds the decision to hand the anchor role to Matt Cooper but, having given him the job for their coverage of last year’s rugby World Cup, he was always the likely choice for this gig. Sure, it’s clear from his show on Today FM that he doesn’t know a huge amount about gaelic games but that complaint hasn’t prevented Michael Lyster from completing a quarter century in the hot seat over at RTE. And sure doesn’t he hail from Cork, boy?

The football pundits look like a sparky kind of bunch. Regular visitors to this site will know of my affection for that curmudgeonly old git, Eugene McGee (This Man Knows What It Takes To Beat Kerry!) and he’s being joined on the couch by Paul Earley, Senan Connell, Joe Kernan, Peter Canavan, Liam Hayes and our own David Brady. It’s the latter two you’d expect to see stirring it as neither of them are afraid to open their gobs and what they have to say can often be quite incendiary. I still chuckle every time I think about Liam Hayes shooting his mouth off before last year’s All-Ireland semi when he predicted that the Dubs would beat the living shite out of Kerry. Poor old Bomber Liston was on with him that evening on Newstalk trying to talk some sense into the Meathman but to avail. It made for classic radio. Let’s hope for a few equally entertaining spats on TV3 over the course of the summer.

The other interesting thing about TV3’s coverage is that they’re also going to have what they call a “prime time magazine programme” on Thursdays which should act as a useful lead-in to the following weekend’s action. This show, Championship Throw In, starts on Thursday 29th May. (By the way, lads, that throw-in should really have been hyphenated.)