TV View:While Henry Shefflin was settling himself to take the first free of the All-Ireland final yesterday, after just two minutes, Ger Canning pointed out that, if he converted it, the Kilkenny captain would take his Championship tally to 18 goals and 296 points. Need it be said: sliotar, bar, over.

After 11 minutes of the game we were beginning to fear that he'd have that tally doubled by the time the ref blew his final whistle and put all of Limerick out of its misery. He might have done, of course, if injury hadn't robbed the game of his presence.

All day Tomás Mulcahy and Cyril Farrell had been telling us on RTÉ how critical it was that Limerick got off to a fiery start, and if that wasn't possible they had, at least, to thwart Kilkenny's efforts to do the same. Eleven minutes gone, 2-3 to 0-0.

The pain almost had us switching to Aston Villa v Chelsea over on Sky Sports; that's how excruciating it was. But, like Limerick, we hung on in there and battled gamely.

Mind you, while our hearts were with Limerick we had the strangest of feelings - even unique feelings indeed - ahead of the game: sympathy for Kilkenny. Seriously.

Granted, feeling sorry for Kilkenny having to cope with this level of success and expectation is akin to how we fretted over how that Limerick woman would cope with winning €115 million in the EuroMillions lottery - it might be a struggle coming to terms with it, but hey, you'd have great gas trying.

What, we assume, she didn't have to put up with was a shrug of blasé proportions from her loved ones when she hit the jackpot, which is how we were told all week Kilkenny folk would respond to yet another (yawn) All-Ireland success.

"Most of the 31 counties would be for Limerick. Kilkenny are kind of smug about it, they're so used to it, it's like having a dinner every Sunday," Cyril had said pre-match, insinuating that when the Cats eye their roast beef, Yorkshire pudding and gravy on the plate they just shrug and say, "Here we go again," when the truth is no creature on earth, human or feline, ever takes for granted a meal so delectable.

"They're here every year nearly, they're very kind of happy about it," Cyril continued, prompting Michael Lyster to intervene, like a spokesman for the Cats Protection Association of Ireland. "Well, I heard Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh on the radio saying that it wasn't so much that Kilkenny are smug, it's like the hen, she lays the egg first and then she cackles."

Still, though, Cyril and Tomás had a sinking feeling that Limerick would be hen-pecked by the champions, but, for fear they'd be caught with egg on their faces, they warned Kilkenny not to count their chickens before they hatched, not to take the hard-boiled Munstermen for granted or they might well be scrambled.

Comfortable All-Ireland victories, after all, are as scarce as hen's teeth, not that we want to resort to cliches or the excessive use of tiresome puns. After all, we don't want to put all our eggs in one basket.

("Eddie Brennan is off again, like a man in an egg-and-spoon race," said Ger, ignoring our warning).

But that was kind of the theme, too - smug Kilkenny - on Up for The Match on Saturday night.

The programme was, to be honest, quite a stilted affair, as it has tended to be in recent years, but criticising such a pre-All-Ireland telly institution, as it is at this stage, would be akin to telling your granny she needs new false teeth. You just don't do it, no matter how overwhelming the evidence.

But while the Kilkenny Elvis is quite probably a very lovely man, we just don't understand why . . . any way.

The match, then, was a disappointment. A big one. We thought of Tomás's pre-match chat with Dick O'Hara, who won just the three All-Ireland medals with Kilkenny in the last century.

"Eight All-Ireland final appearances in 10 years - will ye ever get fed up of going to Croke Park?" he asked.

"Ah, not really," grinned Dick, "it's only up the road."

"He's like a small JCB," said Cyril of Dick.

"Bales of hay below there, he was lifting them up with his small finger," said Tomás.

Cyril shook his head, like these Kilkennymen were other-worldly. Which, we now know, they are.

RTÉ found itself in a Kilkenny pub after the game.

"I always knew we'd do it, so I did," said one supporter, cackling after laying his egg.

"The gas thing about it," said Michael Duignan back in the commentary box, "Kilkenny haven't even been at their best."

God help us all.