TheLastStraw: Just six days to go and then, well, we're talking World Cup heaven. There are those who have complained bitterly about the number of games RTÉ will be showing over the next month, and they're right: it's a scandal.
There will be 64 World Cup matches but the national broadcaster will show us only 56 live, because the final group games must be played at the same time. So, for example, on June 21st we will have to make do with deferred coverage of Iran v Angola in Leipzig. Deferred! It's at times like this you wonder why you bother paying the licence fee.
The obvious solution to this travesty was for both RTÉ1 and RTÉ2 to be dedicated World Cup channels - that way we could have sat the portable television beside the 102-inch high-definition screen and watched Iran v Angola at the same time as Portugal v Mexico in Gelsenkirchen. Then everybody would have been happy. But no, here we go again with this fixation with providing viewing alternatives to the World Cup. As if any well-adjusted individual would want to miss a single second of the 5,760 minutes (not counting injury time, extra time and penalty shoot-outs) of football from Germany.
You've heard the ads. Along the lines of: "Dreading the World Cup, ladies? Fear not!
We'll be repeating the entire series of How
To Keep Your House Spick and Span through the tournament, as well showing our new 18-part series, How to Prevent Your Soufflé from Sinking. And, while your man is glued to the football, we'll bring some romance into your life with The Thorn Birds, An Officer and a Gentleman, Gone with the Wind and Love Story!" Cripes. You have to wonder if Emily Wilding Davison would have bothered flinging herself under that horse if she thought, 93 years later, that the ladies would be more interested in watching Rhett Butler caressing Scarlett O'Hara than Ronaldinho caressing a football.
ANYWAY, EACH TO their own. Forward to Germany where, of course, Ireland will be sadly absent, probably a blessing for such a security-conscious tournament where fans will even be prevented from bringing toilet paper - hardly a weapon of mass destruction - into the grounds. So, at least they'll be spared having to confiscate 25,000 inflatable shillelaghs at the turnstiles.
In the absence of Ireland we have, then, to nail our colours to someone else's mast. We could, of course, do a Switzerland and remain neutral, but where's the fun in that? The obvious choice is England. Are we mature enough yet to offer them our support? Can we let bygones be bygones and get behind Sven's boys? Can we be big enough to lustily chant "Eng-er-land, Eng-er-land, Eng-er-land" from our armchairs? Hell no.
So, who else? After much agonising we've made our choice: Germany. The decision actually has nothing to do with football - Germany had all the vibrancy of dishwater in the last World Cup. But, having chosen "A time to make friends" as the official motto for the World Cup, the Germans are now seriously in need of friends, as they face the prospect of 25,000 Dutch supporters arriving on their soil wearing orange Nazi helmets. Indeed, after the Dutch football association announced that they were banned the man behind them claimed sales of the helmets rocketed . . . to 250,000.
Similarly, after Britain's recently sacked home secretary Charles Clarke pleaded with England fans not to bring inflatable spitfires to Germany their sales rose too. They will, then, most probably be waved in time to sundry terrace tunes, like Stand Up if You Hate Germans, Ten German Bombers (based on Ten Green Bottles), Two World Wars and One World Cup and the Dambusters theme.
That's before even mentioning one of the many England World Cup records that is being released - featuring Geoff Hurst rapping: "Who do you think you are kidding, Jürgen Klinsmann?/ If you think we're on the run/ We are the boys who will stop your little game/ We are the boys who will make you think again." You have to believe it's going to be a long, long summer for the World Cup hosts. The British Foreign Office suspects it will be too, so suggested England fans translate some of their songs into German to impress the hosts. For example: "Sind sie Schottland in derverkleidung?" Which, apparently, means "Are you Scotland in disguise?", which is actually the most offensive chant any footballing nation could have directed at them.
That, then, is what awaits the Germans. Contrary to the theory oft put forward by our neighbours, most Germans we've met have possessed a quite splendid sense of humour. One suspects they will need it from Friday on.
Frank McNally is now writing The Irishman's Diary, Tuesday to Friday
