"May I say at the outset that your photographs don't do you justice - you're goooorgeous," she said, eyelashes fluttering.
"Oh yeah," he grinned, in a bemused kind of way.
"You don't mind if I just savour the moment?"
"Oooh, it's getting hot in here. Anyway, it's not true," he protested, bashfully.
"Oh I think it is. Do we HAVE to talk rugby?"
"No, we don't have to . . ."
My God. For one awful moment Will Carling must have thought he was a guest on the Adult Channel and not Mary Kennedy's Saturday night chat show on RTE. The former England rugby captain only went out to Montrose to talk about scrums, line-outs, rucks and mauls (and his company Inspirational Horizons), but he got a whole lot more than he bargained for. Mary Kennedy? The Jonah Lomu of chat show hosts. Why? Well, the last time Will wore the stunned expression that greeted Mary's `hi there big boy' introduction, he was being mowed down by the strapping All Black in the World Cup semi-final two years ago. It's not easy to make your average beer-swilling, hard-tackling, cabbage-eared rugby player blush, but fair dues to Mary, she pulled it off on Saturday night. And it didn't stop there. "You were hailed as the greatest captain of all time, you had eight years at the top and received an OBE," she gushed. "I was very lucky," he insisted. "You have been called by the newspapers `a natural born leader'." "I had great players under me." "If you were to captain again, do you think you'd do it differently?" she asked, curiously. (If he was the greatest captain of all time, why would he do it differently?).
Of course, what we really wanted Mary to ask Will, now that she had him in her clutches, was for some juicy details about his tempestuous relationship with the tall, leggy one - but Jack Rowell, the England coach, never got a mention. Instead, she asked him about his alleged fling with royalty. "You strike me as a very sensitive person, so all that media hype and the scandal about your friendship with Princess Diana must really have been very difficult?" Will side-stepped that one beautifully and passed the ball back to Mary - she asked him how he was looking forward to the birth of his first child in September. "Are you an eight-hours-of-sleep-a-night man?" "Aaah, I don't know about that . . . it depends what's going on," giggled Will, by now getting in to the double-entendre swing of things. Meanwhile, sitting in the audience were seven very uncomfortable past and present Cavan footballers, waiting for their turn to be grilled by Mary. ("Jaysus, what's she going to say to me?" they were probably all asking themselves.) Jason Reilly, the man whose goal gave the county victory over Derry in the Ulster final a week before, looked like a badger caught in headlights as Mary approached him. But he needn't have worried. "Jason Reilly - great goal, how did it feel?" she asked. (Phew). "It felt great at the time, so it did - didn't feel that great that night though," he said. A quick chat with Stephen King, the current Cavan captain and author of spooky novels, and Peter Donohue of the 1947 team and that was it. Not one of them was told they were gorgeous, sensitive or natural born leaders, but Brendan Bowyer had flown back from Las Vegas to sing the Hucklebuck, so there wasn't time for that class of talk.
If Will Carling received a warmer than expected welcome to Ireland on Saturday evening, it was nothing compared to the one Eurosport's David Duffield must have enjoyed when he was last here. During his commentary on Thursday's stage of the Tour de France, David did his level best to ensure that every cyclist in Europe visits these shores when the Tour arrives here next summer. "I can assure you, having covered the Nissan Classic for seven years, the hospitality, the warmth of the Irish welcome has to be seen to be believed . . . a very warm welcome awaits you in Ireland . . . the Irish always have a very warm welcome for visitors . . . I've been there and I love it . . . the warmth there is absolutely amazing," he said in the course of what sounded like a very warm 10-minute Bord Failte promo. Mind you, he did manage to offend the `city' of Cork during all of this. "Move on down to the south, but don't stay in the big town of Cork, stay in one of the villages on the outskirts." The big "town" of Cork? Mmm, the inhabitants of the Beautiful CITY will love that.
David's guest in the commentary box on Thursday, Noel Toolin, international marketing director of Bord Failte, must have been well chuffed with his host's tribute to all things green. He chipped in himself by telling Europe that Dublin's traffic flows smoothly. "We still don't have the kind of traffic you have on most of continental Europe, so there's lots of space," he said. (By God, Operation Freeflow must be working well out Noel's way).
So while Ireland awaits the arrival of the Tour de France (et a bit of Irlande), Chester City fans await the arrival of Fabrizio Ravanelli, Neville Southall and Ian Rush. And they wait and they wait and . . .
Monday, Sky News' Sportsline. An "exclusive" interview with Keith Williams, a multi-millionaire business man from Manchester and a Chester City fan. "My plans are to get Chester City football club back where they belong," he said. And where might that be, we wondered. "That's in to the second division - at the moment they're in the wrong division," explained Keith.
"I am going to buy Neville Southall . . . I'm going to buy Ian Rush's contract out at Leeds . . . and I have arranged with Ravanelli and his agents to have him on loan for four months so he can sort his future out." Er, pardon?
"Keith, Fabrizio Ravanelli doesn't want to play in the first division for Middlesbrough - why would he want to play in the second for Chester?" asked the puzzled Sportsline presenter Chris Skudder. "He said he has never played in the third division and he will try it," `explained' Keith. "I spoke to him on Friday night with his agents and he said `very happy, pleased to come over'."
"I will contact Ravanelli tomorrow once I've had a word with Chester City's chairman and finalised these other two deals," said Keith.
(Picture the scene. The Chester City chairman sits in his office, under a corrugated tin roof, finalising a sponsorship deal worth £25.50 with Alfred Chuggley Pork Pies Ltd, when the phone rings. "Hello Mr Chairman, Keith Williams here. How would you like Ravanelli, Ian Rush and Neville Southall next season?" "Ooooh, let me think about it. Oh, go on then."). "Well Keith, it all sounds like sensational stuff. When will we hear about all these signings you hope to make?" asked Chris. "Ian Rush and Neville Southall will be tomorrow morning at a press conference at 11 o'clock. Ravanelli will be Friday at half past 10," promised Keith. Still waiting. Bet the Chester City fans who had `Ravanelli' printed on the back of their shirts don't half feel silly. Sky must feel a bit silly themselves. And it wasn't even April 1st.
