TV View: If it really is better to travel expectantly than to arrive then Ireland were in deep slurry long before Brian O'Driscoll and co walked on to Parc de Princes.
The Kilkenny Gaelic football team have travelled to Kerry with more expectation riding on them. In terms of le Coupe du Monde 2007, les Irlandaiseswere finiseven before le commencement.
"Do you believe in miracles?" inquired Matt Cooper on TV3.
"If you've been reading the weekend newspapers, then you'll know Ireland have been written off and in some quarters slagged off," Cooper opined before turning to his panel and asking if they believed it could be different this time. Jim Glennon, Trevor Brennan and Rob Henderson presented a formidably dismissive front row.
Before they crouched and engaged with the enigma that is Ireland's rugby team, we were treated to a montage of the tournament so far, with Bruce Springsteen warbling that he believes in miracles. Except then even the Boss decided to rain liberally from a great height on any hopes of qualification to the quarter-finals: "I've got no miracles - to come true!"
The musical input continued with a reproduction of Mario Rosenstock's ditty à la Eddie O'Sullivan where Don't Cry for Me, Argentinaincluded the most inspired coupling of the World Cup so far: "Our form is not the cleverest - but it's not Mount Everest!"
After that, Jim, Trev and Rob looked like they were going to do themselves a mischief. Clearly Mr O'Sullivan is not their favourite coach.
"We need a bit of madness, a bit of mayhem," declared Trevor with the assurance of a man well acquainted with both concepts.
Jim is an altogether more traditional member of the rugger species but even he was looking for skin and hair to fly, though it had to be translated from some florid business-speak.
"Mayhem and madness to be managed to its optimum," he said, strangling the language like a secondrow getting his paws on a puny scrumhalf.
On Setanta, there was a musical bit too, but a flamenco version of Stairway to Heavenwas ruined by the witless introduction: "Is this a stairway to heaven or a road to nowhere?"
Also present was the subtext that Ireland's task was the sporting equivalent of walking on water.
"The greatest escape since Ronnie Biggs?" beamed Mark Robson.
Donal Lenihan chose to be more prophetic: "Could we dream what looks an impossible dream?"
Back on the Bois de Ballymount, an understandable urge to muster up optimism found little support from Trevor, who poured scorn on Ireland's absence of a game plan and O'Sullivan's selection process in particular. It couldn't be entirely dismissed as a bitter rant either, since Trevor is clearly still on speaking terms with most of the team.
Bemoaning the absence of Alan Quinlan, he sniffed: "He's a waterboy. I was talking to poor old Alan during the week and he said if he did a Roy Keane in Saipan and walked out no one would miss him."
Right from the start there was never a hint of Ireland pulling off the impossible dream, and the somewhat condescending view the Pumas are a bunch of plucky also-rans was brutally exposed. Their second try would have been worthy of Blanco, Sella and the rest of the French team that graced Parc des Princes in the 1980s.
In that light, Brian O'Driscoll's post-match comment - "It's difficult to play against a team that refuse to play in their own half" - was spectacularly lacking in grace, something Jim Glennon pounced on with appropriate scorn: "That's certainly not the best thing Brian has done today. What does he expect?"
Given their initial expectations, the TV3 panel were never going to shy away from directing some flak toward the Irish management.
What was less expected was the chutzpah shown by their sideline reporter, Sinead Kissane, when she interviewed O'Sullivan.
Faced with an East Cork glare that looked capable of reversing global warming, Kissane twice asked the "reconsider your position" question and managed to secure a rather twitchy "No" from the Ireland boss.
"I take my hat off to Sinead," grinned Glennon, who then indulged in the sort of nudge-nudge-wink-wink speculation with Trevor about the "reality" in the Irish camp that he no doubt would have condemned as wild speculation during his Dáil days.
There followed a "what's wrong with Irish rugby?" session that was undoubtedly entertaining but ended up blaming the same system that before the tournament was widely praised as the ideal production line of good rugby players.
It all felt like the initial shots of a blame game that no doubt will last for a lot longer than the team's World Cup. And isn't that something to look forward to.
