TV VIEW: JOHN INVERDALE was sitting outside, of all places, Croke Park yesterday when he introduced us to the BBC's coverage of the afternoon's Six Nations action, leaving us wondering if he'd put the complete absence of rugby supporters about the place down to the state of the economy.
Happily, though, after showing us a montage of Ireland’s most recent Grand Slam glory – and you know those sporty BBC pieces, they leave you half tempted to pay them the licence fee, even though you’re not geographically obliged to do so – he hopped in to a speeding vehicle and made his way across the city to the new-ish Lansdowne Road.
There he was joined by six French men wearing straw hats. They were humming something, but it wasn't easy to make it out. It sounded, in all honesty, a lot more like Jedward's Lipstickthan, say, the Marseillaise, but that might have been because the French lads had spent the morning in Temple Bar.
“It’s easy on the eye,” John gushed when he arrived at the new-ish Lansdowne, although we suspected he was pining for Croke Park. After all, in that column that got him in to a whole heap of bother a few years ago, he’d said the rugby lads relocating from GAA HQ to the new-ish home of football (and rugby) would be “a bit like going to the local corner shop rather than Asda”.
The journey over the river, mercifully, passed off peacefully. John had made it through “streets of deprivation that are a throwback to a time long before the Celtic Tiger revolution made the Irish economy the envy of most countries in Europe”. Remember? We lacerated the fecker. Truth is a painful divil.
“You could grow some nice tomatoes in this magnificent greenhouse,” he said, trying to make it up to us, as if the ability to accelerate the growth of a pulpy edible fruit that is typically eaten as a vegetable or in salad would lift our sagging national spirits.
No, all that would help would be victory over the French.
On Saturday, after Tom McGurk had poked him with a cattle prod to stir him from his Scotland v Wales-induced slumber, George Hook had declared . . . shared his view that the French would be “soiling their Calvin Kleins tonight”.
It’s not an image we particularly wanted shared, but the sentiment was well-received: the French would be flushed with fear at the prospect of playing Ireland at the new-ish Lansdowne.
Back on the BBC yesterday Keith Wood wasn’t entirely convinced by this proposition, a nodding Jonathan Davies coming mad close to forecasting we’d be annihilated in the scrum department.
“It could be a huge win for France or a scrappy win for Ireland,” said Keith, Jonathan edging a touch more to the former than the latter.
“Well, an intoxicating match, the outcome of which is impossible to predict,” said John, confessing that en route from the northside’s Fallujah to the oasis that is Ballsbridge he’d almost dropped in to a bookies to place a bet on the game. But he then realised he had no clue what way it would go, so he left with his 50c in his pocket.
If Hook had been the Ireland coach, John would have bet his house, beloved and children, if he has acquired any, on Ireland.
“Beating France is as easy as ABC,” he reassured us. “The game the experts say we need to play requires a PhD in nuclear physics – nowhere do I hear courage, character, commitment, nowhere do I hear boot, bollock and bite.”
Off we went. No absence of boot, um, bollock and bite. But then the French fought back. Morgan Parra’s kicks? Were we entirely alone in foxtrotting around the living room while under the assumption his efforts had sailed wide, only to see them Roberto-Carlos their way back over the posts in the final nanosecond? You too? Phew.
We lost. But morally, we were still alive-alive-oh. Feck it, that’ll do.
Anyway, after Wayne Rooney’s goal we couldn’t have coped with any more sporting loveliness.
“That’s 18 times I’ve seen it now,” sighed Mike Summerbee, one-time Manchester City legend and Sky Sports’ guest for their Manchester derby coverage.
Dwight Yorke argued that you couldn’t see the majestic piece of sporting sumptuousness enough, but Mike was in a kind of a “bla, bla, bla” kind of a mood, not impressed by his hosts’ insistence that never in the history of association football had a greater goal been netted.
Mike, of course, was wrong. Never in the history of association football has a greater goal been netted – well, since the last greatest one (that’d be Rooney’s volley against Newcastle).
Mike sizzled. So heated was he, in fact, you could have grown some nice tomatoes between his ears. A sight that would have been as easy on the eye as the boy wonder’s contribution to our Saturday afternoon.
