“Oh. My. Dear. Lord. What. Are. We. Witnessing?” Lynne Cantwell was talking about New Zealand’s World Cup annihilation of poor old Hong Kong over on eir Sport, but the question could just as easily have been asked of much of the sporting fare that appeared on our screens over the weekend.
From Stephen Ward and Aimee Mackin’s left-footed wonder goals for the unlikely pairing of Burnley and Armagh, to Jason Day’s apocalyptic decision-making en route to that quadruple-bogey, to Steve Cram and Brendan Foster turning a whiter shade of pale when Sir Mo was beaten and forgetting to tell us who won, to Japan going a script-shedding 14-0 up against Ireland. Many a jaw rested on the living room floor.
And then there was Austin Gleeson pirouetting his way through the Cork defence to score a goal of such beauty that the whole of Waterford will trust that the tape of the helmet grab will go missing so there’ll be no need to trouble the CCCC.
"Up for the Match will be different," said a grinning Waterford manager Derek McGrath after the game, and it will too, not a hint of black and amber in the audience, for example, unless someone got trapped in the studio since last year.
Donal Óg Cusack’s heart might have been in smithereens, but he saluted Waterford and stressed the importance of hailing all the goodness that has come with their stirring 2017 and promoting the general happy state of hurling, rather than nit-picking like the football lads might do on occasion.
Henry Shefflin and Ger Loughnane were possibly about to point out that this risked them sounding like the BBC athletics panel, complete with pom-poms, but Michael Lyster took a break so we’ll never know for sure.
That exchange threatened to be as lively as the one between Jamie Carragher and the lesser Jamie (Redknapp) on Sky after Liverpool opened their season much as they ended the last, proving as leaky defensively as the Hong Kong rugby team.
Redknapp thought the signing of Virgil van Dijk would fix everything, Carragher didn’t, but after a while he felt it would be easier to explain his reasoning to a crossbar than his colleague.
So, some things haven’t changed at all from last season, but others have. Like, by tea-time on Saturday Huddersfield were top of the Premier League, closely followed by Arsenal and Burnley. If your Granda was still of this earth he’d have said, ‘just like when I was a nipper!’
Key innovation
We only got to see Arsenal v Leicester, Watford v Liverpool, Chelsea v Burnley, Brighton v Manchester City, Newcastle v Spurs and Manchester United v West Ham in the opening round of live games, which would have left Premier League telly fans feeling a little bereft, but there was no shortage of innovation to entertain us.
Like Sky rolling their giant iPad out on to the pitch at Highbury on a buggy so that Carragher and Gary Neville could analyse the game in front of a possibly inebriated section of fans who had yet to leave the stadium. It is an experiment you fear they may have to abandon soon, maybe after, say, Neville has to stand in front of The Kop and analyse Liverpool’s defending after a 7-1 defeat by United.
The other key innovation was Sky’s new snazzy graphics for the team line-ups, each department of the team lining up like One Direction might have done for a photo-shoot.
It’s at times like this that you most regret Roy Keane isn’t still playing, what you wouldn’t give to see him being directed by the Sky graphics person to walk towards the camera then, say, blow his forefinger like he’d just shot someone, then cross his arms and look moodily in to the lens. The Sky graphics person would have been limping for a month.
Back at UCD, meanwhile, Ireland went in a bit dazed and confused at half-time, those 14 points down and with their World Cup journey threatening to end not a whole lot longer after it started.
“We’re being monstered,” sighed Daire O’Brien, and Lynne Cantwell, Fiona Steed and Rosie Foley couldn’t disagree. Lynne was asked to point out where it was all going wrong, leaving her not entirely sure where to start. Knock-ons. Handling errors. Full-back. The scrum. Turnovers. The half-time break wasn’t long enough to go through the list.
Second half. Nothing like a bit of adversity to get the blood flowing, 24-14 for the hosts. The phews in Belfield were most likely heard in Tokyo.
