TV VIEW:A ROUGH weekend, that. Decidedly rough. The sporting side of it wasn't the smoothest either, although it's hard to figure out who had the grimmest time of all.
Roy Keane? His Tractor Boys are in desperate need of recapitalisation after being pulped – alas, live on the BBC – by Norwich yesterday.
Tragically, Roy’s managerial stock is now going in the opposite direction of Delia Smith’s souffles – sinking, a bit.
France? Half an hour-ish to go and they led Australia 16-13 in Paris.
A 5.8 per cent chance they’d capitulate by conceding six tries?
“But then the Australian backs went ballistic,” as Keith Wood explained to us on the BBC yesterday. Now, that’s rough.
Andy Murray? Granted, he put up a brave show against Rafa Nadal in the semi-finals of the ATP World Tour Finals in London, tennis' equivalent of the X-Factormeets The Rose of Tralee, but he lost.
In fairness to Andy and Rafa, though, before they gave us a bit of an indoor epic (and "indoor epic" is, generally, an oxymoron), they had to recover from having to enter the arena to the decibel-busting sound of London Calling.
That verse – The ice age is coming, the sun is zooming in, engines stop running and the wheat is growing thin, a nuclear error, but I have no fear, London is drowning and I – live by the river – just seemed less than appropriate to us for a fabricated and marginally pointless monster tennis telly event between already-dripping-with-loot professionals.
So, who else had a grim weekend? Those who dropped Dimitar Berbatov from their Fantasy Football teams, having concluded that he’s a goal-shy waste of space? And replacing him with Rafael van der Vaart (limped off after 10 minutes). Net loss? About 85 billion points.
At least we beat Argentina. That was some consolation. Wasn’t it, George?
“Inexcusable! One try in 79 minutes of rugby against the worst Argentina team to ever visit these shores?!”
Hook’s kinda becoming the Constantine Gurdgiev of sporting punditry, downbeat in the face of admittedly less than upbeat facts, refusing point blank to tell us “sure, we’ll be grand”, thereby depressing the living bejayus out of all of us.
The conditions, though, weren’t ideal, so we’ll cling to that to explain away the less-than- sparkling performance.
Ralph Keyes couldn’t even make it to Lansdowne to partner Ryle Nugent in the commentary box. Ryle told us that his mislaid comrade had left home that morning “but had to turn back at Cashel”.
Cashel, then, was the snow-covered Rock upon which Ralph’s Lansdowne-bound journey perished, necessitating a late call-up for Tony Ward.
“Whatever about putting the cat out in it, you’d think twice about putting reindeer out in this, it’s absolutely Baltic,” said Ryle to Tony.
“Brrrrrrr,” Tony agreed.
Back in the warmth of the studio Tom McGurk told us that George had, heroically, pulled the panel-laden sleigh all the way to Lansdowne, prompting Brent Pope to chuckle and George to throw us a “Bah! Humbug!” kind of glance. We were getting the sinking feeling it was going to be a cheerless class of a day.
It was, too.
Tom, meanwhile, urged us to venture out in to our back gardens and, with the wintry conditions in mind, “feed the birdies”. That was nice.
George nodded, the wings of a mangled, semi-chewed sparrow visible at the corner of his mouth. George? Feed the birdies, don’t feed on birdies. Strewth.
“They don’t like the cold, they don’t like the snow, they’re in a grumpy mood,” Tom told us as Argentina appeared in the tunnel, and true enough, they had the look of men intent on mangling the opposition until they resembled semi-chewed sparrows.
It wasn’t to be, though, with the visitors neglecting to take more than several point-scoring opportunities, not least Felipe Contepomi who, we assumed, was just being nice for old time’s sake.
It was hard not to notice, incidentally, the provocative sponsors’ name on their gear – that of a credit card company. As if we didn’t need reminding that you shouldn’t really spend what you don’t actually possess. May their flight home experience many a frosty delay.
“It doesn’t take away the question marks,” said Tom at full-time, less than pleased with the afternoon’s work.
George, need it be said, agreed, launching in to another “if Declan Kidney was Eddie O’Sullivan” soliloquy that concluded with the declaration that Declan Kidney is, pretty much, Eddie O’Sullivan.
A gloomy end, then, to the weekend’s sporting activities. Kind of like “Ireland is drowning and I – live by the river”.
That’d be about right.
