Live draws were a trying watch on TV

WELL, WE now know who our first Senior opponents in Leinster will be in 2017, but wasn’t that live television draw on RTE last Thursday very hard on the eyes? Talk about drawing blood from a stone, as what should have been a fairly straightforward exercise was stretched out to a mind-numbing 90 minutes.

Let’s face it, there isn’t the same interest in these draws nowadays one way or the other because they’re not that important in the overall scheme of things thanks to the presence of the back door.

The prospect of a possible Leinster hurling semi-final clash with Kilkenny would be a lot more newsworthy if we were still in the 1980s and the entire year was riding on it.

All has changed utterly though, and some would contend that it’s not necessarily for the better.

Getting back to the draw, RTE thought they would add something to it by talking to assembled guests, both players and media, in their ‘green room’ for immediate reactions.

It was hardly cutting edge stuff though, and I don’t know how Dublin’s Jonny Cooper managed to keep a straight face when he trotted out the standard line about Wexford or Carlow providing tough opposition in their first outing of 2017.

We all know that’s utter rubbish of course, but in fairness to him, what else was he going to say?

Our other stand-out moment came when Marty Morrissey got very excited about the prospect of Tyrone playing Derry. Clearly he had forgotten completely about the utter dirge they served up at the same stage as recently as last May in Celtic Park.

Those crying out for a complete reform of the championship structures will have been vindicated by this draw.

RTE tried, and failed miserably, to ‘big up’ a format that is tired and in need of an urgent revamp.

Remind me to give it a miss at the same time next year, because a full hour and a half of my life was wasted last Thursday when I could have followed it instead on Twitter while doing something more productive at the same time.