Pitch imperfect - 20 ye... - Financial Unions

Twenty years ago today, Ireland suffered one of its greatest sporting injustices as The Sunday Game theme was replaced.

It appeared to be the last of Last as the German composer saw his jaunty jingle replaced by a more bombastic offering that screamed 'Celtic Tiger'.

Timing is everything and the decision for change in 2004 - when Pat Spillane also made his debut as a presenter - coincided with the rise of Web 2.0, a shift in the internet’s output to more participatory content.

We need your consent to load this comcast-player contentWe use comcast-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences

So while the first years of the net were spent watching the 3D animation of 'Dancing Baby', what followed was the facilitation of interaction and feedback, which would eventually give birth to social media.

This social web saw the new theme music discussed on forums (remember those?) and a petition ‘to bring back The Sunday Game theme tune’ garnered thousands of virtual signatures.

Reading back on the online discussion at the time, there was a resounding thumbs up for The Sunday Game’s new graphics, as they tried to modernise their product, but a resounding ‘no’ to the musical switch.

One can only imagine the reaction had Twitter/X been in existence 20 years ago.

"I think I had death threats, I had all sorts of people writing to me for months and months on end to say 'Why the hell are you doing this?’

"I’m 100% happy to say now I got that completely wrong."

When Michael Lyster was coming out to bat against it, you knew you were in trouble.

"People just demanded that it be brought back again, and rightly so," the former host told the Late Late Show some years ago, before explaining how he'd been doing a charity gig down the country not too long before that and was introduced to the Match of the Day music by mistake.

Keith Duggan of the Irish Times was another who firmly bemoaned its absence.

"Three minutes of that tune at full volume and any team, even one composed of kids from the iPod generation, will head out through the dressing room door feeling like gods."

Paul Byrnes, then editor of the show, said: "Over the last few seasons we've been inundated with requests from the public to bring it back and this year, the 30th year of The Sunday Game, seemed to be the appropriate time to do it."

So 20 years on, and with The Sunday Game still on the charge, its famous theme music continues to fill the homes of GAA fans across Ireland and the rest of the world.

You know how it goes...

Disclaimer: The copyright of this article belongs to the original author. Reposting this article is solely for the purpose of information dissemination and does not constitute any investment advice. If there is any infringement, please contact us immediately. We will make corrections or deletions as necessary. Thank you.

Sport Camogie Football GAA Hurling Womens Football the sunday game

Pitch imperfect - 20 years since The Sunday Game changed its tune