“To be honest with ya,” Brian O’Driscoll half whispered in to Craig Doyle’s BT Sport ear, “it’s terrible to say...but it’s a tiny bit underwhelming.”
“I agree with Brian,” Ugo Monye sighed.
And back on RTÉ Jerry Flannery was of a similar mind. “You would have liked to have seen more of a contest,” he shrugged.
Leinster can’t win. Well, they can, and do most of the time. But with the exception of maybe Jamie Heaslip most of our pundits on Saturday greeted their latest triumph much like Manchester City’s latest winning streak has generally been received: ho hum. The only difference being that City are fuelled by Abu Dhabi, Leinster by, apparently, demographics.
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Not that any of them was actually blaming Leinster for being masterful, their gripe was more with Toulouse not making them work a little harder for their 41-22 triumph, a victory Jamie believed, based on his pre-match declaration, has already sealed their fifth star. “For all intents and purposes,” he said, “I think this is the final.”
Jacqui Hurley pointed out that this wouldn’t go down tremendously well with Ronan O’Gara, Jamie conceding as much, possibly envisioning ROG sticking a message to their Aviva dressingroom wall on May 20th: “Heaslip: Leinster are déjà champions. Merde!”
And La Rochelle it will be again after ROG’s garçons put Exeter to the sword come Sunday, although it was hard to focus on the game while trying to figure out the analogy Austin Healey chose to explain the challenge Exeter faced playing in a decidedly noisy stadium in Bordeaux. “It’s like going to the house of your new girlfriend and there are six people living there and all of them want to kill you until they find out something about you.”
Alastair Eykyn was lost.
“It’s the hostility,” said Austin. “You expect it, but you turn it on its head and it becomes love.”
Alastair Eykyn was still lost.
As horse racing fans will be after Ted É’s announcement at Punchestown on Saturday.
Ted: “I’m going to call it a day today.”
Jane Mangan: “What?!”
He hadn’t even told his childer about his decision, “True Ted fashion”, as Katie put it when she and Ruby joined their Da for his farewell to his 40-year broadcasting career. “It’s not that it’s sad, it’s just the end of something, that’s all,” she said, Ruby reckoning the pair of them would be extremely sad because “it’ll be like when we were back riding, he’ll be on the phone every 10 minutes”.
His highlights? Among them watching Katie and Ruby ride their Cheltenham winners. “I think you got better craic out of my four than his 54,” she said. He didn’t deny the charge.
There’s a lot not to love about horse racing, especially for us tree-huggers who flinch at the industry’s crueller side, but TED Talk was the very best of fun, fun being a rare enough commodity in sporting punditry this weather. His partnership with Robert Hall was telly gold, not least that day Robert tried to explain to him what Tinder was all about.
“It’s a quick-fix dating website,” he said. “Jaysus, you’re a bit auld to be availing of that service,” said Ted,
Robert’s repeated denials that he had ever used the service falling on deaf ears. “Jaysus, you must be fairly hard up if you’ve to go to Tinder.” They were a hoot.
“I got a great chance from RTÉ,” said Ted on Saturday. “I want to thank them for giving me the opportunity to comment on a sport that I love, that is filled with people I admire, a lot of them are my friends. I hope all of you working for RTÉ get as much kick out of it and get 40 years out of it...I got myself in to a bit of hot water here and there, but sure, that happens on live television.”
And then he left himself and the rest of us in floods. “Before I go off the air completely I’d like to thank my family.... one particular person, my partner for life Helen. Without her I don’t know what I would have done. I’ll say no more,” he concluded.
Jane, who consummately handled being “left on the hop” by Ted, summed it up: horse racing on the telly will never be the same again.
But he seemed happy to pass the baton on to the younger crew, wishing them only the best, departing RTE somewhat more graciously – and less bitterly – than some Sunday columnists. He’ll be missed. One of a kind, that man.
