Mary Hannigan’s TV View: Football traditionalists choke on their Easter eggs

It's not often that we, as a nation, win an Olympic medal in March, so watching yesterday's events in Dublin you couldn't but think Rob Heffernan should have been a guest of honour, open-top-paraded down O'Connell Street. And in many ways, his experience mirrored that of those who were celebrated on Sunday – at first seemingly bettered by a dastardly enemy, but then all changed utterly. Granted, in Rob's case it only took four years and the Court of Arbitration for Sport and not execution and an entire century before being appreciated. But, whatever, that Olympic bronze is terribly beautiful.

He should, of course, be a shoo-in for the sporting person of the week award, alongside Olive Loughnane who was granted a World Championship medal just the seven years after she crossed the finishing line, but they’re going to have to share it with the heroic Mossy Quinn and the plucky Cambridge women’s rowing team.

Mossy, as you know, is seated in front of a bank of tellies by Setanta during their Gaelic football coverage, his mission, which he chooses to accept, to analyse on-field activity and pick out clips that enlighten the viewer as to what is taking place on said field.

Tellies

On Saturday evening he monitored every single one of his tellies for 70 minutes plus added time in the hope of spotting a Donegal man in Dublin's half, but all he could see was Dublin goalkeeper Michael Savage looking so lonesome he could cry. Stephen Cluxton had been given the night off – it looked like Savage had too.

In fairness, though, Donegal did manage to amass seven points, so that’s at least seven occasions Mossy wasn’t eagle-eyed enough to spot their marauders.

“There was a fear Donegal had lost their defensive shape,” said Ger Gilroy to Aaron Kernan and Senan Connell at half-time, with a kind of an OMG expression on his face. The pair cracked up.

Surfing trip

“It’s suffocation and limitation, that’s what Donegal do best,” said Senan, who better choose Bondi over Bundoran for his next surfing trip.

The traditionalists, Ger reckoned, might be "choking on their Easter eggs" upon viewing the spectacle, the game interspersed with moments of excellence but largely blanketed with enough negativity to have you seeking out Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway.

And then there was the ‘handbags’ moment, which Ger feared was actually eye-gouging, but was reassured by his guests that it was nothing at all, the slow-motion just making it look iffy.

A casual hand-pushing- away-face thing. And we’ve all been there, when our fingertips sink in to someone’s eyeballs, and the slo-mo makes it look intentional. The camera, as we know, just can’t stop lying.

Speaking of sinking.

“Cambridge are sinking!”

And Andrew Cotter sounded so alarmed you anticipated lifeboats appearing from left, right and centre, the crew’s water-filled vessel fast turning in to a submarine.

But they waved away offers of help, and submarined on – they might have lost, they might have been nigh on embedded in the Thames’ bottom, but they finished.

Highly careful

Oxford’s Isis, meanwhile, won the men’s reserve race, leading headline writers the planet over to be highly careful with their headlines.

Cambridge’s men had a less damp time of it when they triumphed later in the day, Andrew’s description of the effort reminding us all why we never took up rowing: “Their legs are dying, their backs are breaking and their arms are falling in to their sockets.”

And then we had a procession of chats with victorious rowing people with very American accents, which made it seem a bit more like a, say, Harvard–Yale ding-dong, than a very British affair.

A few Blighty traditionalists, you sensed, would be choking on their Easter eggs.