75 minutes and 11 games: Inside the year's first Sunday Game

It has been 16 years since Anthony Daly made his first appearance on the Sunday Game highlights show, but the biggest surprise came earlier that week.

"I couldn’t believe it when I first heard I was to be in the studios at 1pm and not going on air until 9.30pm. I was thinking, 'what the f*** will we be doing all day?'"

Last night, he came on screen at 10.40pm, 14 hours after leaving home for a 20-minute segment alongside Liam Sheedy.

"People don’t get the work involved," he says.

For the first Sunday Game of the championship, Sean Cavanagh and Paul Flynn are on football duties, while Jacqui Hurley makes her first appearance at the helm since becoming the permanent anchor.

A programme that covers 11 matches – nine football and two hurling – is more manageable than the weekends where across both codes up to 25 matches could be down for decision.

Yet within that, logistical, financial and resource considerations come into play.

"The split season means clashing with other sports for resources," says programme editor Wes Liddy, the man tasked with keeping all the plates spinning.

"We’re battling for cameramen, for directors, sub-editors etc."

The team gathers from morning time, with sub-editors likely to be first in to start into the action from the previous day.

The New York-Leitrim game was down as a report in the running order, but the unexpected result means not only has it been bumped up to a match edit – more than double the length of a report - it will now open the show.

The running order can change throughout the day depending on results, and, similar to Match of the Day where a team’s supporters can feel short-changed, the rationale remains the same.

"The biggest story always leads," Liddy says.

Flynn and Cavanagh sit down to