TV VIEW/Johnny Watterson Like vultures and hyenas we dragged our jowled necks and tufty heads to the TV room for the first potential trauma of the new feature length season.
As a former great movie director - was it Cecil B De Mille? - used to say about successful film making: "you open with an earthquake and work up to a climax".
The potential carcass was Man U and the delicious possibility of defeat to a no-hope Hungarian side too tasty to ignore. "For Manchester United it's a £20 million game. That will be the cost of defeat," offered RTÉ anchor Bill O'Herlihy with a broad smile. "This could cost Manchester United anywhere between £10 and £50 million," said the unfailingly convincing Alan Hansen on the BBC. We got the picture.
In the tunnel the camera cut to an unsmiling Roy Keane. Inanimate, the midfielder set an icy stare into no man's land, frosting out any possibility of the back slapping, nervous banter of his team-mates behind.
Wednesday's European Championship football on both RTÉ and BBC was a picture of what lies ahead and indeed what has gone before, if not so dramatically. It is the cold heart of the future of football, of players like the exceptional Keane needing to turn in a performance for their team to turn out a profit for the company. In the corporate boxes, shareholders and executives likely munched on Keane's despised prawn sandwiches and nervously gulped their Chablis a little quicker than decorum permitted.
After 15 minutes and Van Nistelrooy's goal the £30 million was looking safe. With Beckham's free kick the share price rallied. It was a rout. We caught the wind and glided to another channel.
Sky Sports was hollering about the US Open and on Thursday had assembled the great and good of British tennis. Those who had failed to live up to the big Wimbledon challenge during their careers peopled the studio.
Barry Cowan, Mark Petchy (didn't he play at Carrickmines one year?), Chris Bailey in the anchor seat, and Sam Smith, the former British number one woman player.
At Flushing Meadows, the Open venue, what we noticed was empty seats and ball boys chucking things around the court like petrol bombers.Then there were the planes drowning out every noise, even the umpire's voice echoing up the multi-tiered ghostly arena.
Week one of the tennis and the one thing that remained in the mind was the landing of Mark Philippoussis following a volley against Sjeng Schalken on day two. As the Australian hit the ground his knee buckled in several different directions before he collapsed in a heap onto the ground.
Knowing from his run at Wimbledon this year he had undergone cartilage surgery on both knees and spent long months in a wheel-chair during a prolonged recovery, Philippoussis might have dropped £10 million on the spot, if his career was threatened. Sky Sports, never ones to shun what the fans wish to see even if it does put them off their pretzels, replayed the landing in slow motion. Uugh. Show an over-the-top Keane tackle any day. At least you know he's only trying to hurt, not injure.
It is unlikely many people are watching the last tennis major of the year as it is being screened on a pay channel, Sky Sports, and the big guns, Venus and Serena "catsuit" Williams, a rejuvenated Martina Hingis, Jennifer Capriati, Lleyton Hewitt, Gustavo Keurten and Andre Agassi are just cleaning the Louis Armstrong Stadium with the flotsam and jetsam of names outside the top 50.
It is a pity for tennis, as it could be for the FAI, that the spread of the game is being so narrowed. Wimbledon's success is, in part, due to the breadth and quality of coverage they give to the event.
While Sky don't have a John McEnroe or Boris Becker to add glamour to shrewdly made observations, the network undoubtedly provides value for money.
On Saturday afternoon, the BBC tried to attract custom with the Mountain Bike World Championships in Spain. On the three Sky Sports channels there was stiff competition. The running scores and brief reports from English soccer, with Keane's elbowing of Jason McAteer dutifully reported as soon as it occurred was a soccer anorak's dream on Sky Sports One.
Bored with that and Sky Sports Two had live European golf from the BMW International in Germany, which ran all afternoon.
On Sky Sports Three, if you had a mind to you could have listened to Stuart Barnes sing the praises of "Backy" (Neil Back) and company for 80 minutes as minnows Leeds tore into the European Cup winners, Leicester, in the Zurich Premiership.
And, if you disliked rugby, or even "Barnsy's" commentary, you just had to hang around for the US Open to begin in New York.
No trauma there. Well, at least until Tim and Greg turn up.
