That was a highly decent football week, especially for those from Dundalk and Madrid, the television highlight hard to choose because there were so many outstanding moments.
Take Oriel Park on Friday night when Peter Collins, Kenny Cunningham and Stewie Byrne became invisible at the ground, the smoke from the flares below billowing skywards and up their nostrils, to the point where the trio were at first silhouettes, before totally disappearing from view.
"At this particular moment in time, I can't even see my nose, Peter," Kenny didn't say, but he was definitely thinking it. Dundalk had no such visibility problems, finding their way to Cork City's goal on two occasions, which was more than plenty to win them the title for the first time in nearly two decades. "There's Stephen, the big smiley head on him," said Brian Kerr of the Kenny man whose impact on the club since arriving two years ago has been of the Midas kind.
Come Saturday, we saw even less of the first 15 minutes of the game they call El Clásico than the RTÉ lads saw of Dundalk v Cork, but that was down to UK broadcasting restrictions that don't permit live football on British telly between 2.45pm and 5.15pm on a Saturday.
So, after presenter Scott Minto whipped us in to a frenzy about the contest, featuring the return of Luis Suarez – "A game that always thrills! Always excites. And tonight, with some added bite!" – he then told us we'd be kept in the dark for the opening 15, but that Guillem Balagué would keep us updated.
And there was Guillem, sitting at a table in the corner of the room with his headphones on, watching the game on his little laptop, holding up the cover lest we try to sneak a peek. Louser. The obvious thing for Sky to do was put a mirror behind him, but they were taking these broadcasting restrictions very seriously.
Nothing big
Scott, you could tell, was just praying nothing big would happen in the first 15, at which point Guillem declared: “Gooooooooal!”
"My goodness Eidur, a great finish from Neymar," said Scott to the Gudjohnsen fella, thereby letting it slip that he was breaking the viewing ban. But he wasn't alone, Eidur and Chris Coleman glued to a screen in front of them, never once making eye contact with Scott when he addressed them, which was quite rude.
“Boyhood defending,” said Eidur of Madrid’s efforts to prevent Neymar from netting, which wasn’t a schoolboy error on the Icelander’s part, it was just cute.
And then it all went pear-shaped when we joined Rob Palmer and Gerry Armstrong at the Bernabéu, Madrid scoring three, so that was rubbish.
By then, of course, Madrid had mullered Liverpool at Anfield in the Champions League, which came as a mad surprise to Graeme "I think Liverpool tonight might surprise a few people, I really fancy them, I don't think this as one-sided as people are making out" Souness on Sky. On to Super Sunday and he was noting that no one ever gets penalties at Old Trafford, it being a handful of months since Liverpool got three in the one game there.
Dog’s abuse
A bad week for Souey, then, but no worse than Phil Dowd’s, yesterday’s referee getting dog’s abuse for his performance from
Chelsea
fans, even though he let
Branislav Ivanovic
and
John Terry
away with provoking
Chris Smalling
and Marcos Rojo in to headlocking them at a set-piece.
The highlight? Possibly that moment when Martin Tyler was lauding Chelsea goalie Thibaut Courtois for his performance, telling us that if you extracted the syllable "Court" from his surname, and pronounced it "caught", then that would be super apt.
It's not often Gary Neville falls silent – which is a very good thing, him being fabulous – but he just had no words for Martin's observation.
Anyway, Chelsea just about hung on for a draw after Robin van Persie equalised in the 94th minute. Man of the match? Thibaut Caught-All.
