Ireland’s Men’s rugby team are back on RTÉ this evening as they will be for each of the games in the Guinness Autumn Nations Cup of internationals taking place across the coming three weeks.

The rest of the games though including this weekend’s clashes between Italy and Scotland and England and Georgia will be broadcast on Premier Sports here in Ireland, available on the Sky Sports Extra platform.

The coverage will have a distinctly Irish flavour with Ryle Nugent moving from the commentary box to the hosting chair and his being joined by Rob Kearney and David Wallace for the analysis.

Nugent has been active with Channel 4 and BT Sport since his departure from RTÉ as Head of Sport three years ago and has also established Stakeholder Sport to advice clients on the changing nature of the commercial and media environment in sport.

Speaking to us during the week he spoke of how he would “have learned a lot about the importance of listening” from working with Bill O’Herlihy, Tom McGurk and Darragh Maloney in the RTÉ Studios and that this is an experience he is looking forward to.

He will also be looking forward to getting more out of Rob Kearney talking about other internationals than the recently retired Irish star may have been comfortable with about his own recent former colleagues.

“You’d always be very conscious of what your dressing room colleagues might be saying about you on screen,” said Kearney.

“There’d be added weight to how they would reflect on your performance and it would be especially tough to take if they were critical because you’d think they would know what you’d be going through.”

“That makes it harder for me to be totally open about those I’ve lined out alongside for so many years, especially now that it is so soon.”

I will be more comfortable running the rule over the Scottish and English players this weekend and while media analysis was never something I was driving towards as a post-playing career, I am looking forward to it.

Check out the how and when to watch all this weekend’s coverage in our Sporting Weekend Screen Guide.