It is a genuine privilege watching Peter Harte live.
The importance and luxury of that only hits home when you realise that those watching from their couches all missed his best moment because of a good old-fashioned GAA replay.
Tyrone swept Donegal aside in frightening fashion on Sunday but, for a quarter of an hour at least, it threatened to break into a contest.
Donegal were asking Tyrone the questions we thought they would. Tyrone’s fascinating formation even looked for the briefest of moments that it might struggle. And two of football’s finest individuals were going at it toe-to-toe and blow-for-blow.
In the 13th minute, Michael Murphy pushed Donegal ahead 0-4 to 0-2 with an unbelievable kick from distance off the top of his laces that split the posts at the town end of St. Tiernach’s Park.
18 seconds later – no exaggeration – the ball was over the bar at the other end courtesy of Mark Bradley and courtesy of absolute genius from Peter Harte.
For most of those 18 seconds though, RTÉ broadcast two replays to the viewing public instead.
By the time they returned to the live action, this is where the ball was at.
We didn’t even see Bradley’s kick, just his leg in the swinging motion.
But it’s okay because they had a replay – to the extent of the ball mysteriously bouncing up for the Tyrone forward.
The replay starts with the ball just coming into the screen from nowhere.
Hopefully the public missed nothing.
Except they did. They missed the move of the match, the pass of the season. They missed Peter Harte at his effortless best.
They missed the kickout and where it landed and how it came down the left wing but they pissed the pinpoint delivery that weakened knees at Clones. And they missed it because we were still watching the move that just went.
It’s not the first time. A lot of the GAA’s broadcasters still haven’t caught up with the speed of the game. Niall Morgan in the Tyrone goals had the ball set on his 13′ before RTÉ cut to the replay of the Michael Murphy point.
By the time they came back, it was too late. But this instance wasn’t believed to be RTÉ’s fault.
To be accurate, RTE take the feed from BBC and it's the BBC's use & selection of shots that you are taking issue with, I think.
— Jerome Quinn (@JeromeQuinn) June 18, 2017
It’s still a broader problem that needs addressing with general coverage because the viewers at home are missing crucial elements of the game.
“Whatever about missing kickouts,” Colm Parkinson fumed on The GAA Hour. “Mark Bradley scored a point in the first half and we missed the whole move building up to it.”
They missed more than just the build-up. They missed the whole reason for tuning in as it transpired on the podcast.
Conán:
“You missed the best move of the game, in my opinion. Peter Harte comes down the left wing, gets it onto that left foot, he sees Mark Bradley making a run in the other direction. With the outside of the boot, he hits this diagonal ball – but it’s not your normal diagonal ball, it actually curls around the corner and sets Mark Bradley away over the top.“It was crazy stuff, what he did. Bradley runs onto the ball, the defender’s scrambling, Bradley cuts back and puts it over. It was just like a wand the way he sent that ball around the corner and over the top.
“It was the best moment of the game – straight after Michael Murphy’s big score, then Peter Harte does that. Two giants going at it and you’re thinking, ‘this is football’.”
Cian Ward chimed in with a fantastic point.
“It can’t be that bloody hard to do a split screen anyway,” the Meath man said.
“There’s nothing worse than crowd shots, is there? They drive me up the walls.
“Lingering, 30-second crowd shots when the game is ongoing. You’re roaring at the telly, would you get back to the match, like. Why are we looking at this man?”
