Martin McElkennon suspects RTE is deliberately stirring things up.

Scathing comments made by Sunday Game pundits Joe Brolly and Eamonn O'Hara on successive weekends have attracted more column inches than any of the matches played so far in this year's championship and ace trainer McElkennon believes the national broadcaster is deliberately courting controversy to gain ratings:

"The remarks that some people have made on RTE, there seems to be an agenda there," the Tyrone man - who was himself publicly vilified by Pat Spillane while he was part of the Meath backroom team last year - comments in The Irish News.

"I think that is the best way to describe it - an agenda among some people making sweeping statements that really are only a personal opinion and there's no real facts to back it up.

"That seems the road - for some reason - that RTE is going down. I don't know why. Maybe this has been decided beforehand by the producers of the show to try and get in more viewers.

"If people are talking about it now, maybe that is what they are after. You have boys sitting in studios who have never managed a team - and this is the bit that is getting to me most - boys who have never managed an intercounty team.

"None of them have done it, yet it is very easy to turn around and say 'well I don't do it but, by the way, I will also tell you how it is done' by sitting after the game in a studio and giving your very one-sided opinion.

"I have heard some of the statements over the last few weeks and I have talked to a lot of good GAA men and I have not heard a single man say to me that they are in support of it.

"There is nobody saying to me 'what your man said last Sunday or the Sunday before, wasn't it great to hear?'. People are asking instead: what road are we going down here?'. And you have to wonder where this is going to end up." Tweet

Most Read Stories