Anchor man: Michael Lyster prepares for his 30th season at the helm of 'The Sunday Game'; inset, the panellists; from top right, the many faces of Michael Lyster from the 1980s to 1990s

The Sunday Game anchor Michael Lyster was rushed to hospital with a sudden illness on Friday night.

In a statement last night RTE said: " RTE wishes to confirm that Michael Lyster has been taken ill and will not be presenting on RTÉ 2 this weekend.

"Michael is receiving treatment, and his family have requested privacy."

There will be no further comment at this time, RTE added.

The 60 year-old father of four, a native of Co. Galway, had a major health scare two years ago.

He said subsequently: “I had heart failure. It was towards the end of the championship season in 2012.

“I began to feel sick but didn’t know what was wrong with me and kept going. I was actually making things worse.”

At the time, Michael said: “Everyone thinks they are indestructible but then you realise you are not and that health can so easily be taken away from you.”

In an interview with the Irish Independent last month, ahead of his return for the 2015 championship, Lyster said he felt 'lucky' that the issue had eventually been spotted.

"If I had assumed for another week or two that this was just a flu and that I could beat my way through it, or if it happened to me earlier in the year and the All-Ireland finals were still to be done, I'd probably have decided to keep going and I mightn't have made it," he said.

"The best-case scenario would have been that I'd have collapsed and been rushed to hospital. But it might have been too late to rush me anywhere. When your heart is operating at that low a level, it's not necessarily a heart attack that's the risk. It's the risk of just dropping dead.

"Actually, fellas who get heart attacks, their hearts would be in better shape than mine was. My heart was just gradually shutting down. That's the scary thing about it."

Lyster has enjoyed largely robust good health since becoming The Sunday Game anchor in 1984, missing just a single programme in the three decades since when his mother, Mary, passed away in May of 2010 before this weekend.

Joanne Cantwell filled in for the presenter yesterday, while Darragh Maloney is presenting the show today.

Maloney opened the show by wishing Lyster "all the very best".

Online Editors