TV VIEW:TG4'S PRODUCTION team will, you'd imagine, need a lengthy enough stay in a health farm to recover from their exertions yesterday, an epic six hours of live coverage from Croke Park for the women's All-Ireland football finals.
The day climaxed with the sound of a Dub making a senior All-Ireland victory speech on the steps of the Hogan Stand, a sight usually only seen on Reeling in the Years.
As fortune would have it the last Dub, before Denise Masterson, to have the task of triumphantly addressing the stadium, was on hand for a half-time chat. It was five years before the turn of the century that John O’Leary made that speech, so when Masterson welcomed a senior All-Ireland trophy to Baile Átha Cliath it was, indeed, a sound for sore ears. Of the Jackeen variety.
Back in 1995 the Dubs beat Tyrone, as they did yesterday, and as yet more happenstance would have it who was sitting in the stands only Peter Canavan. You could only hope the fella was in his seat for the intermediate final, Donegal’s Yvonne McMonigle turning in a show that was positively Canavan-esque.
Katie Taylor, meanwhile, was the guest of honour on The Late Late Show, along with her father and coach Peter. It was only a few days before that he had a right lash at RTÉ for not showing Katie's final live, when they have the habit of bringing us as-it-happens coverage of bouts involving boy sluggers from Buncrana to Ballylongford.
Those who watched RTÉ's web coverage, though, will be forever grateful they opted to show The Pink Pantherrather than Katie on TV – those two Caribbean commentators proved to be the stuff of monumental legend. "OooOOOoooooh!!! Kathy (err, sic) Taylor!! CombinaaaAAAaaation!!" Quite marvellous, in a "total gridlock" kind of way.
Ryan Tubridy wondered if Katie was worried about getting injured, but she reassured him that she picks up more knocks when she’s playing football. True enough, football is a dangerous game, especially when you put an accumulator euro on Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United winning their games of a Saturday.
As it proved, only Stoke, Aston Villa, West Brom, Blackburn, West Ham and Manchester minnows City picked up Premier League wins at the weekend, busting the title and our coupon wide open.
Match of the Daybrought us some of the big-boy carnage on Saturday night, Gary Lineker promising us some startling action "interspersed with the decisive and instructive views of Alan Hansen and Alan Shearer". And fair play to the fella, he said it with a straight face.
We could be entirely wrong, but it's possible Lineker was responding to the criticism of the one and luckily only Stan Collymore earlier in the week, when he declared that: "In my opinion MOTDis stale, cliched, smug pap a lot of the time . . . it just looks like a golfing clique who have a passing interest in football, and that can't be right. It's crap, and like dinosaur football, has to change." Collymore was particularly peeved by Shearer's ignorance of all things Hatem Ben Arfa, the winger who's on loan at Newcastle from Marseilles, assuming he must have been trying to hack his way out of a bunker when the fella was winning caps for France.
Mind you, people in glasshouses should be mad careful. As Football 365 gleefully recalled last week, Collymore was the pundit who once confidently predicted that Egyptian club Al Ahly would win the World Club Championship . . . a whole day after they were knocked out of the competition.
Still, he probably has a point about Shearer. As a player he was stupendous, as a pundit he can make Jamie Redknapp seem Stephen Hawking-like. Although Collymore’s suggestion that he should be replaced by Ian “usually wrong, wrong, wrong” Wright . . . well, you’re grand thanks, Stan.
How about Robbie Savage? He’s on ESPN duty this weather, turning up yesterday with Kevin Keegan for their coverage of Manchester United’s 2-2 drubbing of Bolton. “I was a Liverpool fan as a kid, watching Mr Keegan here, he was my Mum and Aunty Beryl’s favourite player,” he said, leaving Kev scarlet.
On to the game and as a mildly ineffective Wayne Rooney was removed from the action after an hour the Bolton fans serenaded him all the way to the bench: “You couldn’t score in a brothel.” That was nice.
“It’s a different Rooney this year,” Kev sighed, “it’s like watching chalk.” Robbie nodded, wondering where the cheesy Wayne had gone, his form taking a troublingly Tiger-like dip. “But you’ve can’t have your cake and eat it,” said Robbie, his eyebrows wiggling, suggesting that Wayne had been scoffing on the good life a bit too much. Kev agreed. “And you can’t sell your wedding to the magazines and suddenly say that’s the tap I want to turn on, but we want to turn the other tap off – there’s just one tap.”
True enough. Little wonder Aunty Beryl loves him.
