Tomás Mulcahy was surprised see Pat Spillane appearing on RTÉ's Up For The Match before the weekend's All-Ireland football final between Dublin and Kerry.
"You were on last week, and my God, what you didn't say about Up For The Match," former Cork hurler Mulcahy told Spillane on The Game On Sunday podcast.
"And there I was sitting on my couch last Saturday and who makes an appearance on Up For The Match..."
Spillane explained that he had been guilt tripped into making an appearance on the show from his home club in Templenoe. The Templenoe club had Tadhg Morley along with Spillane's nephews Adrian and Killane involved in the Kerry panel.
"When RTÉ rang me, I said 'Alright so, I'll do it'," said Spillane.
"Then after a few days, I was thinking to myself, 'I'm not involved in the club now. It's about the present day inter-county players and it's about the future. I have no involvement with the club, and I don't want to all of a sudden become their spokesperson'.
"I rang [RTÉ] the night before and said, 'I don't want to do that. Just leave it'.
24 July 2022; RTÉ Sunday Game analyst Pat Spillane before his final broadcast, with his Sunday Game colleagues, from left, presenter Joanne Cantwell, analysts Sean Cavanagh and Ciaran Whelan before the GAA Football All-Ireland Senior Championship Final match between Kerry and Galway at Croke Park in Dublin. Photo by Brendan Moran/Sportsfile
"Do you know what they did? The person that was organising it for RTÉ, they said 'Pat if you're not there, we're cancelling the whole lot'. I'm saying to myself, 'There was 100 kids going to be down there - music, dancing'. I said 'No'. She said, 'We're cancelling it'.
"Within the next 10 minutes after that phone call, I must have had three or four phone calls from distraught club officers saying 'Look, Pat, they are not coming, and they said they won't come because you won't talk'. That's why I was there because it was for the club.
"On Thursday, the bold Marty rang me up and I said 'Marty, before you ask the question, the answer is no'.
[He said], 'Would you ever come to Killarney for Up For The Match?' I said, 'Marty, I'm on Up for the Match [from Templenoe], there's no point in me being on twice, and I think the programme is a load of crap'.
"That's why I was on Up For The Match."
Mulcahy absolved Spillane of any hypocrisy.
Why did Pat Spillane end up on Up For The Match after he had a go at it last week...
He explains all...#Rte #GAA pic.twitter.com/lJ01t3pRPr— The Game on Sunday Podcast (@tgosunday) August 2, 2023
See Also: Pat Spillane Throws Hilarious Dig At Joe Brolly Over RTÉ Departure
