“Check your ref, watch!” It was that kind of weekend, the drama rendering some, like the clock-watching Robbie Savage, if not speechless, but struggling to correctly sequence their words.

Earlier in the Welsh game he’d declared that “it’s getting tasty – fliers tackling in!”, leaving his partner in the commentary box, Steve Wilson, possibly wondering if he was suffering from heat stroke.

Which he was after Hal Robson-Kanu did his thing, Robbie nigh on combusting. Emotions running high, then, not least on the streets of Marseille where some visitors were taking those nostalgic for football-related yobbery on a trip down memory lane.

And then they brought it in to the stadium - which led to one of Saturday’s night’s more peculiar occurrences, ITV completely ignoring what was going on in the stands at full-time, Jacqui Oatley and Glenn Hoddle chatting idly on the pitch while the Russians were charging in the direction of the English. Football and rioting really shouldn’t mix, but if it’s happening you might as well go mad and mention it.

Especially when your own lot are the victims rather than the perpetrators. All very peculiar, but after that late late Russian equaliser maybe ITV felt their viewers were glum enough without adding to the load, so it was best to overlook what was going on, a policy that seemed to be adopted by stadium ‘security’ too. The game itself had started promisingly enough for England, but as Peter Crouch put it at half-time “all that’s missing is a goal - and we need one, obviously”.

Still, as half-time approached, Clive Tyldesley hailed Roy’s boys’ “irresistible pressure”, even though Russia were still resisting, it being 0-0 and divil a sign of a goal.

When it came, no one was more surprised than Keith Andrews over on TV3, possibly the most enthusiastic (and shoutiest) co-commentator in the history of televised sport. (His finest moment when Raheem Sterling failed to get a touch on that Danny Rose cross: “OPEN YOUR LEGS! TRY AND GET THERE! SLIDE! DIVE! DO SOMETHING!” Sublime.)

“I’m not so sure what Dier is doing around these free-kicks,” he said, “he might well prove me wrong now, but he doesn’t strike me as much of a technician as the likes of Kane and Rooney.” Four seconds later. “I’m just digging in to me humble pie here, Trevor,” he chuckled, as Dier disappeared under a mass of celebrating English bodies.

Back on ITV, meanwhile, Clive was hollering “Justice for the England 11!”, which left a nation scratching its collective chin, Clive maintaining the theme that Russia’s obstinate refusal to concede a goal until then was a grave miscarriage of footballing justice. And then when they impudently equalised, he was at a loss. “England won’t know whether to laugh or to cry,” he sighed, although there’s a fair chance they opted for the latter.

Back in ITV’s Parisian roof-top studio Lee Dixon was trying to console the viewers by dismissing Russia’s equaliser as a “freak header”, which can’t really have helped, the consensus being that if there was a ‘Deserved’ table England would be joint top with Wales.

Like if Wim Kieft’s 1988 header hadn’t spun like a Shane Warne delivery, it’d have finished 0-0. Over on TV3, Graeme Souness was quite sensibly pointing out that England had simply been caught in no-man’s land, between holding on to what they had and going on to get a second, the failure to do either leading to their highly inevitable downfall. And any way, he reckoned “this England team right now is as weak as I’ve ever known”, and doubted even one of their players would get in to a top top team, which somewhat countered Alan Shearer’s assertion earlier in the day that three Welsh players – Bale, Ramsey and Williams - were so good they might even get in the England line-up. Which, as you could imagine, made him popular in the valleys.

On to Sunday and Slaven Bilic continues to rock our Euro 2016 world, his opening five minutes on ITV making you damn the heavens that you weren't born Croatian. When Glenn Hoddle suggested the goalie was a bit dodgy for that Modric wonder strike, Slaven was mad close to impaling him on the Eiffel Tower, while he dealt with Emmanuel Petit on his other side by looking for gratitude that he had lent France Dimitri Payet for the summer. Legend.

He didn’t hold out much hope for Norn Iron, though, and he was proved right enough when they went down to Poland. If only they had the feistiness of Neil Lennon in midfield, the fella, on loan from TV3, putting Gary Lineker in his place when the latter suggested the expansion of the tournament helped teeny teams like NI qualify. “We finished top of our group,” Lennon replied, with so deathly a stare Gary might well have felt like he’d had been impaled on the Eiffel Tower. Tasty fliers tackling in.