{"id":621887,"date":"2026-09-11T23:16:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T23:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/621887\/"},"modified":"2026-09-11T23:16:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T23:16:13","slug":"staff-unease-leads-to-rte-and-newstalk-stripping-back-coverage-of-ireland-v-israel-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/621887\/","title":{"rendered":"Staff unease leads to RT\u00c9 and Newstalk stripping back coverage of Ireland v Israel games"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s also understood that Newstalk\u2019s Off The Ball programme, which agreed live commentary rights with the FAI in March, won\u2019t be doing so for the matches on September 27 and October 4.<\/p>\n

The State broadcaster this year ceased its live Eurovision<\/a> programme while Israel remained involved, “as participation remains unconscionable given the appalling loss of lives in Gaza and the humanitarian crisis there.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Although Head of Sport Declan McBennett affirmed no such boycott would apply to football due to \u201clegal and contractual obligations\u201d, he did admit to Newstalk in July they were undecided on how their broadcast would be carried.<\/p>\n

That is nearer finalisation following a meeting at Montrose on Thursday, as first reported by The42.ie.\u00a0 At this stage, there are no plans for commentary or punditry, either from studio or at the games.<\/p>\n

It is expected they will have a skeleton crew on the ground at the matches in the neutral countries of Hungary and Serbia.<\/p>\n

That means there will be no live pre-match build-up, nor half-time and full-time analysis, across TV and radio platforms.<\/p>\n

Commentary can be supplied through Uefa\u2019s centralised feed.<\/p>\n

When calling on RT\u00c9 in June to refuse to broadcast the fixtures, Siptu said they were committed to supporting union members who refuse to work on them.<\/p>\n

Those concerns have been raised internally, just one of the reasons for paring the package back to the minimum.<\/p>\n

RT\u00c9 and Newstalk will provide their full broadcast and analysis for the other two games in the window, the visit to Kosovo on Thursday week, September 24, and against Austria at Lansdowne Road on October 1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s also understood that Newstalk\u2019s Off The Ball programme, which agreed live commentary rights with the FAI in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":621888,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1113,61,60,43,6085],"class_list":["post-621887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-fai","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-rte"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=621887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621887\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/621888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=621887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=621887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=621887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}