There was no getting away from it all week, and as Mary O'Rourke put it on the Saturday Night Show, somewhat questioning the fuss about that new moving picture, it looks like "very hard work". It was a relief, then, to escape to Murrayfield yesterday for Scotland's Six Nations skirmish with Wales, at least there we'd get a break from the wall-to-wall coverage on you know what. The Beeb's Andrew Cotter: "Two shades of Gray in the secondrow, Richie and Jonny!" Maybe not.
Mind you, it was a relief to see that Ronan O'Gara's ears, when he turned up for punditry duty on RTÉ, didn't sport 50 shades of black and blue after 50 clips following his Late Late Show appearance, when he was asked which was more demanding: scoring a gazillion points during his career, or helping raise five kids under six.
"OMG," said the nation as one, much as one county might have reacted to the sight on TG4 of Ger Cunningham in the Dublin dug-out for yesterday's hurling encounter with Tipp in Parnell Park. Cork: "It'd be like seeing an Irish man captain the English World Cup cricket team!" Well . . .
Anyway, Dublin prevailed, rather handsomely and Ger can look forward to an even easier fixture next weekend when they take on Kilkenny.
Similarly, the Irish rugby team have a comfy one up next too, England, having disposed of France on Saturday.
George started going on about historical battles again and how if the French were led by General Schmidt, rather than General Saint-André, we’d be leaving Lansdowne with our tail entre our jambes, but he took deep offence at Tom’s suggestion that the French were fat.
Leprechauns “There’s one bench player for France who’s 23 stones!!!!!” said Tom, and you could only send your thoughts out to the bench, George dismissing this concern, doubting that the “fat fellas would be gasping for air after 40 minutes” and that the “Leprechauns” would be running rings around them.
For once, he wasn’t completely wrong, it was a bit more competitive than that, as the eye hanging off Johnny Sexton, as he spoke to Clare after the game, suggested. As for Jamie Heaslip’s pain – it just heightened the uninitiated’s sense that the dearth of red cards in rugby suggests a whole new definition of “handbags”.
General Schmidt was happy enough, though, not least because his lads were up against “some of the biggest humans I’ve ever seen play rugby”, all of which irked George all over again, “I think this thing that the French are just big fat fellas is a bit unfair”.
Fatism aside, it was a happy afternoon/evening, which can’t be said for events in Ashbourne on Friday night. If you have a broadband connection that leaves you removing the hair from your head strand by strand, the final couple of minutes weren’t good, Ireland right on the line about to steal victory when . . . freeze . . . so you had time to make a cuppa before finding out if they crossed the line. They didn’t, alas, and this, too, is where we must apologise to the call centre in Mumbai for complaints about how dark our new computer screen was during the game, @IrishRugby informing us that the lights had gone out in Ashbourne. Fifty shades of black.
Streaming in the dark
These things happen, so best not to erupt until the post-mortem, but watching the World Cup semi-finalists on a jerky live streaming in the dark, while the under-20 boys were live on the non-jerky and bright RTÉ 2, you can but sigh.
Which is what most of Twitter was doing yesterday in response to poor auld Robbie Savage's work on the Beeb's FA Cup coverage of Aston Villa v Leicester. Most of them, it seemed, opted for the alternative commentary, provided by Blue Peter – who knew it still existed? Worth a bash. "Birmingham has more canal length than Venice," said the voice, before telling us how to build the universe out of sticky back plaster. Never mind that, a Blue Peter's badge to anyone who can make the lights work for the Irish women's next Six Nations game.
