TV VIEW: "NOTHING IS impossible, impossible is nothing" had been our mantra for the day that was in it, but by the time we kicked off at Croke Park on Saturday afternoon our buoyancy had been well and truly deflated by RTÉ's build-up, holed below the waterline before the good ship SS Kidney had even set sail.

True, initially there had been mixed messages.

"Can they do it? Yes they can," Conor O'Sheabama had reassured us when addressing the prospects of Ireland beating New Zealand, and George Hook had reminded us that "we are never without hope", maintaining a theme that we half expected Brent Pope to continue by thanking Joe Biden for his contribution to the ticket.

By now we were so full of hope we anticipated George addressing the nation thus at full-time: "If there is anyone out there who still doubts that Croke Park is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our rugby founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of the Irish pack, tonight is your answer."

But our hopeful balloon was soon burst by none other than the former Taoiseach. Bertie Ahern - still in need of crutches, a bit like the economy - was decidedly less bullish, reckoning that to be hopeful about the challenge ahead was to be a bit on the over-audacious side.

"But the pipe dreams live on," he told Tracy Piggott, when, to be honest about it, not even a life-support machine can keep alive a dream with a pipe attached.

And that kind of set the tone for the remainder of the build-up, George, on reflection, concluding that "essentially here, we have picked a team to keep the score down", a claim laced with such overwhelming negativity it drew a collective "nooOOoooo" from Conor, Brent and Tom McGurk.

Tom, no more than ourselves, was beginning to feel a bit down about it all, only the news from Twickenham - England 14, Australia 28 - raising his flagging spirits.

It was Brent, though, who struck the most negative tone of the afternoon when he promised to "do the haka naked if Ireland win", a promise laced with such overwhelming menace it drew a collective "nooOOoooo" from Conor, George and Tom.

Now, Brent doesn't strike as someone who promises to do the haka naked at the drop of a hat, and in fairness he did have the look of a man who was thinking "Oh. My. God. What have I said?" as soon as he said it, but the mere fact he thought Ireland's hopes of victory were so slim he felt safe in offering to display all his worldly goods on top of Tom's desk come full-time made us realise it wasn't going to be our day.

"Will YOU do the haka naked," Tom asked George.

"No," said George, quite emphatically, which at least averted a meltdown at the Broadcasting Complaints Commission's switchboard.

Before that penalty try was awarded to New Zealand just before half-time, when Ireland were hammering the visitors 3-3, we sensed that Brent was perspiring a touch profusely back in the studio - as, you'd have to assume, were Tom, George and Conor.

But from there on in he was safe enough, the mantra flipping to "Beating the All Blacks is impossible, impossible is beating the All Blacks - unless, of course, you're Munster".

"Ireland were punch drunk at the end," said Conor, as a fully clothed Brent smiled a smile of contentment and, more than anything, relief.

And relief was the only word for it when Henry "Western Warrior" Coyle saw off the challenge of his Russian opponent at the Breaffy House Resort in Castlebar on Saturday night.

"It's like doing your homework for an exam and nothing coming up you studied for," he said after the bout, in reference to the withdrawal of his original opponent, Delroy "Sweet Dee" Mitchell, at two the previous morning.

And we've all been there: you study Pádraig Pearse the whole night before the exam and they only ask about James Connolly, so all you can do is start your answer with "Well, James Connolly was a good pal of Pádraig Pearse, who . . ."

And that's kind of how Henry had to handle Sergejs Savrinovics, just think of him as Sweet Dee's other half and, if you like, treat those two Castlebar imposters just the same.

While, naturally enough, we were rooting for Henry, we couldn't but have a soft spot for Sergejs.

"The Russians must just have found this fella at two in the morning in a bus queue in Moscow," said Jimmy Magee, wondering, like ourselves, how he'd got to Mayo in time. Must have been an express bus.

"Being a professional boxer is a bit like being a taxi driver, you must always have petrol in the tank, you never know when you'll be called," said Jimmy. True enough. But Sergejs's tank was empty in the end, Henry won and promptly gave "a big shout out to God".

Audacious, perhaps, but after passing his exam, despite nothing he studied for coming up, Henry's entitled to conclude nothing is impossible.