TV VIEW:BRIAN O'DRISCOLL on punditry duty? The sight on Sky Sports on Saturday was probably a painful enough one for Leinster supporters, a bit like seeing Picasso reduced to just giving his opinions on other people's pics, rather than getting to slap a bit of paint on his very own blank canvas.
Perhaps the only sight to rival it in the distressing stakes all last week was when Womble Orinocco removed his head after a live video stream on BBC Radio 2’s website, prompting angry parents of freaked-out kiddies to light up the Beeb’s switchboard.
O’Driscoll, though, has been more Great Uncle Bulgaria than Orinoco for Leinster all these years and rarely, it should be said, lost his head, instead underground, overground, wombling free through the rearguards of Dutch Beer Cup opponents. So, how would Leinster fare without their leader while he’s recuperating? (That recuperation, incidentally, was hardy helped by Sky not even giving the fella a chair to sit on, instead placing him on what looked like a breakfast bar in their Lansdowne studio. He handled it all quite elegantly, in fairness, but Sean Fitzpatrick seemed less comfortable, possibly because his buttocks spent the evening trying to grip the breakfast bar so he wouldn’t slide on to the floor).
Well, Leinster did grand, mullering Bath. Still, your heart had to go out to the English lads – they score 27 points against the reigning champions in their own backyard and still lose by 25? That’s rough.
“A quite delicious performance,” said our host whose name – and apologies for this – escapes us. But it being Sky it was probably Guy or Geoff.
But “Joe Schmidt won’t be happy,” said O’Driscoll, suggesting the coach is a bit like one of those parents who says on hearing you got 99 per cent in an exam, “what happened the other 1 per cent?”, sounding for all the world like Occupy Wall/Dame Street detractors. Mind, for many of us, “what happened the other 83 per cent,” was the much more likely inquiry.
Who mightn’t have been happy either were Munster folk.
“Leinster at their best are like a sports car in overdrive,” said our co-commentator Stuart Barnes. “Munster, their dearest and nearest rivals, at their best, are like a tank grinding in a slow gear, crunching anything in their way. Wonderful contrasts.” The problem here is that Stuart had to enter Munster the following day.
“On a Saturday night you can be in Dublin and it’s all slick and it’s glitz and it’s magnificent – and the next day it’s Munster coming out of the soil.” By yesterday, then, when he was commentating on Munster’s 19-13 annihilation of the Scarlet team from Wales, Stuart sounded as uncomfortable as Sean appeared on his breakfast bar, possibly having had a tractor inserted where the sun don’t shine on his arrival in Limerick. But, a quite excellent weekend for Irish rugby (aside from Gloucester’s poxy win over Connacht).
For Everton? Not so much. A goal down at home to Norwich.
“The crowd are going radio, Jeff,” Paul Merson told his Sky Sports Saturday host Jeff Stelling.
Jeff: “Radio?” Merson: “Radio rental.” Jeff: *** Blank *** Merson: “Mental.” Jeff: “Oh, right.” Everton bounced back to take a point, enough to make Norwich radio, but, alas, Arsenal couldn’t quite repeat the trick against Manchester City.
A rather splendid game it was too – a “Christmas cracker,” as Sky billed it – a sumptuous advertisement for English football they told us. Well, if you overlook that only four of the 26 outfield players who featured are English. Your heart has to go out to Fabio Capello, who was probably scouting at the Ebbsfleet United v Kidderminster game in the hope of spotting a bit of English talent.
Co-commentator was Gary Neville, who has made quite an impact since his free transfer from Manchester United to Sky Sports. “We miss him in the dressingroom, it was like he’d eaten a radio – he never stopped talking,” Patrice Evra pined.
GNev’s reviews have, on the whole, been very positive, the English football-telly-watching public gobsmacked by a pundit who actually speaks his mind and occasionally makes sense. Little wonder Jamie Redknapp’s looking especially twitchy these days.
Still, GNev divides opinion, much as he did in his playing days. “Gary Neville, you ****er, you ****er,” City fans bellowed on learning he was on Sky duty at the game. But GNev didn’t mind, it made him feel like he was back playing again. The Great Uncle Bulgaria of United’s rearguard.
