Sideline Cut: When all is said and done, I think I am with the horse in all of this. If Waterford Crystal wants to head up the Football Association of Ireland, three cheers is what I say. Let him have the reins. And if he has any more of those chill pills under the hay in his stables, then pass them around.

As has been rightly noted by many commentators, these are grave, grave days for Irish sport. The samples have been stolen, the medals have been tarnished, the talks have broken down, the jobs have not been advertised and the Government is huffing.

The impossibility of the situation was probably best summed up in the enigmatic question delivered to the nation by Milo Corcoran this week. "How long is a piece of string?" the FAI man mused, sounding as lonesome and poignant as Hamlet himself.

It is a fair question and in the midst of such unrest and unhappiness, it probably needed to be asked. And if we are honest and transparent, we will have to hold our hands up and admit: "Haven't the bloody foggiest, Milo."

By introducing the string theory to a mess that is already tangled up in God knows what, Milo was simply trying to focus our minds. We do not, of course, have the faintest idea as to what string he was referring to. We do not know if the Irish Sports Council funded this string or if it were used to tie the bag of footballs that never arrived in Saipan, or if it made it into the Genesis report.

We cannot be certain if the string dates back to the glory days of big Jack Charlton when it might have served as a noose for his Geordie whistle or a sideline restraint for Maurice Setters.

Perhaps it was string used to tie up the flaps of the tent from which Mick McCarthy centred his world view. Remember that time? Big Mick standing manfully at the door of the FAI tent - we always imagined it as a two-man foldaway rather than a marquee - taking a whiz for Ireland. We don't know if the string has a vote, if it has ever been a serving officer and if it travels first class on away trips.

Does this string have the respect of Keano? Is it up for a sing-song? Is it a soccer-string through and through? All of these questions were undoubtedly put to Milo Corcoran over the past few days but as is his way, he just smiled a little sadly and repeated the question.

It is just as well we do not know the answer anyway. I, for one, have been given so many answers and explanations over the past week that I do not know what to do with them. It is cruel and inhumane to expect us to try to deal with Milo and Waterford Crystal and Cian and Fran and John Delaney and John O'Donoghue at the same time. No wonder they gave Charlie Bird that doctorate. It is all very well for him.

Charlie is a master at grappling with the complexities of an issue and breaking them down into little nuggets of clear fact. But he has been so busy these days it is hard to keep up with him. We need more simplification. We need Charlie dressed in jodphurs and a black velvet hard hat and leaning on a Range Rover when he is down with the show-jumping set in Kildare. And we need him in an Ireland shirt and a scarf whenever he reports on the state of the people's game to us, the best fans in the world.

The horse lovers of Ireland are up in arms. The soccer lovers of Ireland are down at heel. The best solution might be to merge them into one strange and exotic body of people, argumentative but curiously lovable. The facts are already beginning to get mixed up, the major players becoming blurred and indistinct. For instance, although I heard a long and brilliant interview with Waterford Crystal on the Joe Duffy show one afternoon, I have not laid eyes of him for quite a while.

In fairness to the horse, he has shown a commendable sense of aloofness through the whole mess. Not for him a Sunday Indo soft-focus photograph capturing him at fodder in some dewy, enchanted Irish glen. Not for him an exclusive tell-all interview or a night spent chomping at the bit in Lillies with Gavin Lambe Murphy and the boys. Ever since that fateful evening in Athens, old Crystal has opted for the quiet life.

Perhaps there are times when, over one pail of water too many, he shares his regrets with those guys in the stables that never travelled so far nor knew so much. Perhaps there are moments when he is known to whine: "I had an Olympic gold and I pissed it all away."

But that is just among friends. In public, there has been nothing but silence which in comparison to the noises emanating from all the horse people and the boys in the FAI is by far the most prudent policy.

Here is the thing. We are all tired. Milo Corcoran is tired leading a bunch of merry men constantly misunderstood by the world. John Delaney is tired from travelling up and down to Waterford. Cian O'Connor is tired filling broadcast time and defending a good name which was perfectly private and unknown before Athens.

The Olympic medal is undoubtedly tired of being described as tarnished. We are tired pretending to be outraged about the compromise of a medal that, in truth, only a very small minority really cared about in the first place. Genesis is tired - the report and the band. We are tired of hearing Irish soccer is in crisis even as Shelbourne and Cork City duke it out in a fascinating league season finale and Brian Kerr brings the national side onwards and upwards. We are tired of being told the Waterford Crystal story is like an incredibly exciting novel when in fact it is that boring Wednesday of your schooldays when you were stuck in the lab for double science. We are tired of hearing about blood-letting in the FAI and blood-testing for poor old Crystal.

We are none the wiser. We do not know the length of a piece of string and probably don't even want to. But we do know we are kind of weary of having the spats and rows that these people keep inflicting on us day in, day out when at the end of it nothing will change.

Like I said, I am with the horse in all of this. We owe him something for dragging him into this human mess. Merge the horsey set with the soccer heads and make old Crystal the honorary chief executive. He has the Waterford link and, like Milo, a luxuriant mane.

And you have to admit, he is pretty good at clearing hurdles.