LOCKERROOM/Tom Humphries: We were funny in 1994 when we assumed FIFA would base us in Boston for the World Cup because we'd like it there. Remember that summer? Irish fans buying World Cup tickets had to go to a bedroom in a hotel in Orlando, upon the floor of which was spread out all the cash and all the tickets.

I've decided that I'm against the implementation of the Genesis report. It smacks, as we say in the GAA, of a foreign code. Also I'm against having anybody but Bertie as Taoiseach and John O'Donoghue as Minister for Sport. I want Frank Murphy to have a job for life, but I'm sure that's probably in the rules already. I'm against creeping professionalism.

I like the faction fights, the fairground atmosphere, the freaks. I want to see some rich guy step up and challenge Pat Hickey in a vote every two years or so. I love the Carphone Warehouse GPA, the sheer lyrical ring of their name, the thought of the mischief they might cause. I actually miss the old Irish Amateur Swimming Association and their bearded lady.

On bad days when the grey skies get in on me and the seasonal affective disorder begins to nibble, I have a hankering to hear a little barking from the Artists Formerly Known as BLE. I yearn for Jonathan Irwin to ride his unicycle on the tightrope again. I miss the acrobat troupe that was DISC. I wish Gay Mitchell would pick up that Dublin Olympics ball and run with it one more time. God but he was beautiful in full flight, his little quiff bouncing in the wind. Run, Gay, Run! C'mon whaddya say? Let's bring back Michelle 'n' Erik.

Does everything have to be professional? Well run? Serious? The lads are right. The lads came back from Switzerland the other day and not a bother on any of them. They had the duty free. They'd had the Toblerone. They'd had the crack.

The Euro 2008 vote was already up. All politics apparently. Who knew? Sports politics is all politics. Bid! Schmid! Well, they're welcome to it, those bloody grey Europeans! They'll have their competition and it will be efficient and well run and safe and profitable. If you like that sort of thing. But it won't be funny. It won't be a good laugh. It won't be lashing rain.

They could have had some fun. They could have been ringing us up in February 2008 and listening to us on conference call as they swear blind that we said we'd have two stadiums built for the summer.

Lennart: "You are making the joke, no?" Bertie (indignant): "I am not. We were let down by a builders supplier there which set us back, but we have some nice cladding for them now which he threw in. So we've another job on in March, big job, but after that the lads will be working flat out five days a week."

We're funny. We do funny better than any other sporting nation. We're comical. People thought we were funny when we got that chocolate box redhead and turned her into Johnny Weismuller without the help of an Olympic-sized pool and we all kept straight faces when they asked how it was done. Train smart! They didn't know the half of it.

Florida is so safe you can leave your front door open and when you come home the worst you'll find is that Goldilocks has eaten your porridge. As luck would have it, we got turned over by some geezer with a trustworthy name like Nick the Greek. As one of the World Cup sponsors might have put it: For the hotel room: $120. For the looks on their faces: $ 1 million. For all those column inches: priceless.

But we were funny way before that too. We were funny when we'd go to Poland to play all our soccer friendlies because one FAI blazer was considered a fine catch behind the Iron Curtain. And Roy thought Saipan was bad. Clearly he's never got on a diesel-belching bus from Warsaw to Bidgosz with one team-mate suffering, nay dying, from the runs and the others handing him the souvenir linens they had been presented with at the airport. He cleans himself up and lets the linens slop, one by one, out the window into the Polish night. True story. Funny times.

We were funny back when we went to Chile to play in a stadium where prisoners were held and executed. And what about the Lost Civilisation of Domestic Soccer? See, you don't learn to be funny. You are either funny or you're not. We're funny and we have great old characters to be getting on with. We built a great stadium and the caterer got done for having mice droppings garnishing the sandwiches.

We don't have administrations, we have a cast. Remember when Jackie Gleason or Art Carney would make their first appearance in The Honeymooners each week? The whole audience would start clapping because they knew hilarity would ensue; well when I'm working I often get the urge to clap when a familiar character hoves into view.

I don't want to be writing in here about how impressive the presentation of the annual report and accounts were in the FAI chief executive's multi-media, multi-lingual presentation last week. You don't want to read it. I want blood on the floor, cordite in the air and two clowns slipping about on the whole mess.

IS THERE not a place in the world of professional sport for a little Mom- and Pop-run operation, just managed, if that's not too fancy a word, by some plain down-home folks who don't want to get high falutin' about things. We could be an example to everyone.

Listen, people have been talking this week about perspective. Show me a nation with better perspective.

We have so much perspective we forced our greatest athlete to strip naked in the tunnel before an Olympic race in Atlanta. We let our best player go home from the World Cup to walk his dog! We put the Irish "Open" in a men only club!

We watched Mr Eastwood sue McGuigan. We hosted the start of the Tour de France as it was exposed finally as a Pharmaceuticals Fair. We pulled out of hosting the World Equestrian Games. We managed to make amateurs who hurl for the love of it go on strike! We haven't a pot to pee in but we needed a velodrome! We entertained the Bertie Bowl!

Gear rows. Stadium debacles. Personality clashes. Drug scandals. Court cases. Missing monies. Dodgy votes. Abandoned matches. We've had them all in the last 10 years.

Those are not the actions of a country obsessed with winning. No Sir. We're talking old-fashioned slapstick here. Show us a banana skin and we'll show you the quickest way to get a fat backside onto the floor. Burlesque. Farce. Pratfalls.

Punch 'n' Judy shows. Anything considered. Laughter is the best medicine and we're all hypochondriacs.

If being Bertie means never having to say "sorry", being an Irish sports fan means never having to say "tell me that again, slowly, it actually sounded like you said . . ." Being an Irish sports fan means never having to wonder for long about what fresh hell is coming next. Being an Irish sports fan means knowing that you'll get your reward in another life.

For now it's enough to know that a lot of the poor folk who run Irish sport would be homeless without their retainers, they are poor divils who have fallen through the cracks in society and have had to take to sports administration to avoid lives as crack whores or sports journalists.

So let's not mope. Let's get back to celebrating ourselves and the grrrreat lithle counthry we are. As the fella says, don't mourn, disorganise.