“It’s not a game” – Michael Lyster insists Pat Spillane and Joe Brolly’s Sunday Game rows are for real

They are the GAA's Punch and Judy.

For some fans, a big football championship match wouldn't be complete without Joe Brolly and Pat Spillane going at each other on The Sunday Game. From the row over Brolly's description of Colm Cooper as a "choker" to Spillane taunting Brolly about his measly, single Celtic Cross, the arguments between the two can, for some, give off a bang of pantomime. However, in an upcoming interview on Irish TV, The Sunday Game presenter Michael Lyster insists the animosity between the two panellists is not staged, although Lyster insists it stops short of hatred.

“They don’t hate each other, but it’s not a game,” said Lyster, as reported in the Irish Times. “They come with different perspectives on it. What they actually do is bemuse each other, more than dislike each other."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQNMNRl__zg Lyster does admit that the outspoken Brolly can cross the line, as he did with his comments about Cavan football and Marty Morrissey, but the Galway native reckons Brolly is a "loose cannon worth having".

“Joe Brolly is a very, very intelligent guy, very knowledgeable in GAA. When you leave out all the madness, what he says is right on the money most of the time. Except he’s always capable of the other thing, that’s neither here nor there, and not on any money," says Lyster.

"But is he a loose cannon worth having? Yes. If he was a guy that was just a mouth, that was saying things for attention, that wouldn’t work. But you can strip back his comments, and some of things he says that gets under people’s skins, and say, ‘well, what about the point he was making’ and you’ll find the point was pretty accurate."

It may contradict a point he made two weeks (or minutes) earlier, but that doesn't mean it was not a point worth making.