SPORT ON TELEVISION: Metaphor and history loomed large in RTÉ's analysis of what was a familiarly bewildering Parisian visit for the Ireland rugby team.

"I like wartime analogies, I have to say," admitted George Hook, the Churchill of TV rugby pontificating, sometime before six o'clock on Saturday evening.

He wasn't joking. An early mention of the Maginot Line prompted a deluge of historical references to the point where, at one stage, it seemed that George A Custer was actually playing tighthead for the Irish. Or possibly for the French. For it was one of those afternoons when it was truly hard to figure out what was going on.

"Is it a question of pulling all the tricks out of the bag?" Ryle Nugent asked Ireland coach Eddie O'Sullivan before the game.

"Well, it's not a question of throwing caution to the wind," replied O'Sullivan in what appeared to be simultaneous rejection and affirmation.

Back in studio, Tom McGurk, excited perhaps by the academic bent of his studio chairmanship, introduced a somewhat medieval and sinister touch to the repercussions of a potential loss in France.

"If we get hockeyed here, will Mr O'Sullivan's head be on the gates of Dublin castle?" he demanded.

Hardline as George Hook can be, he looked horrified at the suggestion, while Brent Pope stayed quiet, searching for a suitable New Zealand figure of historical prominence with which to enrich proceedings. So McGurk changed tack.

"Do you smell the ghost of Warren Gatland around here today, Brent?" he challenged.

Brent, to his credit, actually nasally inhaled, like a solemn novice at a particularly heavy wine-tasting session, before confessing, "I don't really, no." Or maybe he actually said, "I don't really know." Because the rest of us were certainly in the dark.

But it was wonderfully entertaining stuff, if a little bit trippy. It seemed a shame that the match had to kick off, because it was surely only a matter a time before our intrepid trio got round to a critical re-appraisal of the Casement diaries.

Saturday confirmed a couple of things. It really is no fun watching Irish teams get beaten 44-5 no matter how chic and exhilarating the French fans are. And when Irish teams go down, Irish analysis skyrockets.

Happy as the dreamy days of famous Ireland wins were, it took the steam out of the panel. George Hook is one of the great proponents of Irish irascibility, and while he undoubtedly loved the great wins of the past two seasons, he comes into his own during times of crisis.

And on Saturday, while the Ireland team went down, he hauled RTÉ's rugby panel to the top of the national broadcasters' sports analysts, making the much-loved soccer format look a little stale.

While Hook steams away making solid points through frankly hallucinogenic imagery, Pope is content to act as the temperate, more sympathetic straight man. And McGurk hovers somewhere between impartial inquisitor and commentator with an agenda.

On Saturday, top of his list was clearly the issue of cleaving poor Eddie O'Sullivan's head from his famously body-built frame. It was probably nothing personal: Six Nations championships aren't ever really over until some or other Irish backroom figure gets the axe.

But whereas Hook had pursued the doe-eyed head of Warren Gatland with Lecterian glee, it was he that championed a stay of execution for O'Sullivan. He contended that you couldn't behead a man after four games and pointed out that we had won three from five this season.

"So we can beat the Celtic nations," sniffed McGurk. "I think St Mary's could beat them. We are worse than last year. We have gone backwards."

With Brent Pope querying as to why his colleague was not as quick to condemn O'Sullivan as he had been Gatland, Hook suddenly found himself forming a one-man Maginot Line for the current management.

It was the one moment where he was less than authoritative, where he was stumped. The inference, of course, was that Gatland had been treated less sensitively because he is a New Zealander.

Hook was, however, voracious in his criticism of the Irish game plan, arguing that O'Sullivan had erred in attempting to get the Munster pack to adapt to a template which had more in common with the Australian blueprint. But he also admitted, returning to his preferred McArthurian vernacular, that "the Irish had been outflanked".

He might have added out-jumped, out-run, outwitted, out-passed, out-tackled, out-sung, out-kicked and out-and-out walloped, but there was no real need.

Was there ever any reason to truly think it was going to be any other way?

Pity that Peter Clohessy's last march, his own Battle of Little Bighorn, had to come. But his touching exit perfectly illustrated the essential difference between France and Ireland when it comes to rugby. Options. Brilliant as he has been, is there any question that Clohessy would have survived for half as many years on the French national side?

Although the recent genius of Brian O'Driscoll entitles us to delusions of grandeur, the Irish game will always be based on expediency, on working old warmongers like Clohessy to the last. It comes down to the numbers playing the game.

France can reinvent themselves with every spring if they so choose: Ireland reinvent by generation. Clohessy was the last of the old school, the loveable, fire and fury merchants, and, trotting off the field on Saturday, he looked as if he knew it was time.

Another painful record then and hot debates aplenty to take RTÉ's rugby coverage through to next season. George Hook, for instance, insists that the outhalf pendulum has swung back in favour of Ronan O'Gara. Brent Pope doesn't think Eddie O'Sullivan should go but isn't exactly sure if he ought to stay either. Tom McGurk just wants blood, preferably spilt in Gothic fashion.

They are definitely the strangest trio to make it on to RTÉ's screens since the heyday of Wanderly Wagon.