TV VIEW:SO MUCH for that assumption about sport providing a pick-me-up in troubled times. When Sky's cameras zoomed in on Paul O'Connell's crestfallen face during the closing stages of Munster's game against Toulon yesterday the levels of his despondency were such that we were tempted to browse through the nation's balance sheet for some light relief.
It was, of course, Toulon’s owner Mourad Boudjellal – their “sugar daddy comic book millionaire”, as Brent Pope dubbed him on Saturday night – who alleged that Munster were “financed by the IMF”, in response to Donncha O’Callaghan’s charge that his shower were, more or less, a bunch of oval-ball-tossing mercenaries.
“How dare he,” Tom McGurk said to George Hook of Boudjellal’s slight.
George was no less affronted, but for reasons of inaccuracy. “It’s the country that’s owned by the IMF, not just Munster – it’s all four provinces.” Tom and Brent nodded, although Tom insisted that “we” aren’t owned by the IMF, which, technically speaking, was untrue. RTÉ is as owned as the rest of us.
But had the International Monetary Fund XV from Munster any hope at all of raising our ground level spirits by beating Toulon and keeping their Lager Cup hopes alive?
Well, Brent was hopeful, as is his upbeat wont, but George, as is his downbeat wont, demurred, rattling on about “Mercy Convent Ballinrobe”, which, we assumed, meant Munster were done and dusted.
“In the back row you have an ageing Wallace, a below par Leamy and you have James Coughlan, who is (shrugs) James Coughlan,” he said.
“Look – they’re going back to the well with an inferior team.”
Brent, perhaps concerned that this class of defeatist talk would have us all reaching for the double brandies, opted to stand up and fight, reminding George of Munster’s “mental toughness”.
“It won’t be enough,” said George, despite the fact that he was still digesting that salt-covered tie he had to consume after Munster saw off Perpignan last year.
Then there was the moral argument. “Toulon are guilty of paying players to come over, on the bankroll of the sugar daddy – do they have Toulon in their blood, no they don’t,” argued Brent.
“It’s the parish against the world,” declared Tom.
“Since when was Tuitupou born and reared in a parish,” asked George, which, you have to concede, however reluctantly, was a fairish question.
“They gave him a blood transfusion,” argued Tom.
“Howlett? Warwick?”
“They’ve been Irish-ised,” Tom insisted.
“No, no,” said George, “that’s this narrow view of life, that only the Irish are pure – everybody else doesn’t eat children.”
Brent wasn’t for budging, intimating that Toulon do indeed eat children – in sugar daddy rugby terms, at least – and that Munster could see off the kiddy-consumers and advance to the latter stages of the Lager Cup.
D-Day. That’d be yesterday. “We’ve had to go all Top Gun,” said our Sky host Simon Lazenby as he, Paul Wallace and Will Greenwood donned Cruise-like shades on the top deck of the Toulon stadium. Blinded, they were, by the Mediterranean sun. God love them.
Kick-off. And it was from that point that it all went wrong. At 6-26 Stuart Barnes suggested Munster needed their “biggest miracle of all”, but urged the travelling hordes to keep the faith. When the camera picked them out they appeared utterly dumbfounded. The notion that George might finally have got a prediction right had left them stupefied.
The light faded on Munster and the day that was in it. “This is a bitter night, it’s just dust and death for Munster’s hopes,” said Barnes, which, combined with O’Connell’s despair, was enough to have us concluding that sport, on the worst of days, isn’t a pick-me-up, it’s a heartbreaking bundle of anguish.
Ask Jackie Fullerton. There he was, harmlessly presiding over the live draw for the JJB Sports Irish Cup on BBC Northern Ireland on Saturday when Warrenpoint Town or Cliftonville were given two sixth round matches, away to both Crusaders and Dungannon Swifts.
“I think there was a little glitch there,” conceded Jackie, noting that Nortel had no one to play, and that Warrenpoint Town or Cliftonville had to wade their way through 180 minutes of football just to reach the seventh round. Turned out that the man plucking the balls out of the Cup mistook a six for a 10 – hey, we’ve all been there – so Nortel were left with no one to play.
“Number six was drawn out first, so we got that right,” Jackie smiled, leaving us asking:
“Eh?”
No harm done, accidents can happen. Like Toulon beating the International Monetary Fund XV. And George Hook calling it right.
Strange days, indeed.
