Phew. After all that talk on Tuesday about the danger of a meteor shower wiping out TV3's Euro 2000 debut it came as a mighty relief to see a smiley, happy Trevor Welch pop up on our screens at 6.20 last night.
One suspected that if speeding particles of grit from the comet Tempel-Tuttle had collided head on with the satellite linking our newest TV station to Yugoslavia, Trev wouldn't have been smiling.
"And what did you make of that goal," he would have asked Mark Lawrenson. "Well. . . it sounded very well taken by whoever scored it," Lawro would have had no option but to say.
But, satellite intact, TV3 were up and running, even if half the country were mistakenly tuned in to TV5 (6.20. . . "Bon Soir, je m'appelle Sacha Distel". . . cue frantic re-tuning).
First weatherman Martin King, kitted out in an Irish strip and carrying a football, gave us the weather from Belturbet, Ballina and Belgrade.
And then Trev, the man your husbands will leave you for (so the TV3 billboards claim), got the show under way. He quickly drowned out cries of "you'll never beat Bill O'Herlihy" with his very affable manner - an admirable trait in someone who has so many estranged husbands kipping down in his house. Trev says "fabalis" a lot, a word one could not use to describe the tie that dangled from studio analyst Mark Lawrenson's neck. I trust that Lawro talked a good game all night, but I can't be sure because I had to turn the sound down on the telly every time his lime green satin tie appeared on screen. Trev showed us the menu for the pre-match entertainment and you wondered if they'd have time to fit the match in at all. The low-light in all of this was cue masters Ken Doherty and Feargal O'Brien picking their Irish team (which included Robbie Keane. . . when was this filmed?) with snooker balls.
Then it was time to pop over to TV3 reporter Helen Carroll in Vicar Street. And, as luck would have it, who should she find sitting on his own in the middle of the pub but Jack Charlton. "What d'you reckon is going through Mick's mind at this stage?" Helen asked Jack. "Well, if I was sat there thinking like Mick is at the moment I'd be wondering what we're going to face because he hasn't seen them play. It's very difficult taking the national side to play a team who've just been sort of put together, haven't played a game yet," said Jack, who appeared to believe Yugoslavia was formed three weeks ago.
Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't they play in the World Cup? A couple of months ago? Might Jack have spent the summer fishing, and missed the footie extravaganza? "Any predictions?" asked Helen. "I, like you and everyone here, don't know what we're going to see. I don't know anything about the Yugoslavs except that fella Madonna Vitch who was at Villa," he said, of Milosevic, who was at Villa. ("Ha! Now you know how we felt all those years, Helen," giggled RTE's Ger Canning and Peter Collins, sitting at home, reflecting on the days they were given the task of getting sense out of Jack, without upsetting him too much.)
Kick-off. The only Irish player on the pitch younger than TV3 commentator Conor McNamara (21) was Damien Duff. This is very depressing. Conor probably thinks Shay Given is a veteran. Are we getting older or are commentators getting younger? Conor did a grand job, especially considering he had to combine his commentating duties with cheering helper Frank Stapleton up. "Yugoslavia's passing in the final third isn't up to scratch, is it Frank?" he said chirpily. "No. But it's getting closer," said Frank. And two minutes later they scored. Frank was a bit on the pessimistic side all night, in sharp contrast to what we're used to on RTE.
"Overall I think Mick will be very, very pleased but very, very disappointed," said Noel King back in the studio. "Hopefully Croatia, Macedonia and Yugoslavia will cause trouble amongst themselves," he added. Janie Noel, that's the last thing the Balkan region needs.
So, it was a losing international debut on the field for TV3, but the lads gave it a 110 per cent in the studio. Fair play.
