I was quite taken aback to see Emily O'Reilly, rather more amply upholstered in the flesh than I had remembered, singing at Lansdowne Road last Sunday. What a girl! Our ombudsman who is now - we learn - to be our ombudswoman is in addition our ombudsthrush, warbling with the best of them. Moreover, the added avoirdupois suited her.
Where do her talents stop? In fact, it turned out that the singer was Cara O'Sullivan; no doubt she would make a splendid ombudsperson also. And though there is no such thing as yet, no doubt soon there will be, as the word "man" is systematically removed from the English language.
It has already gone from RTÉ, which refers to chairwomen and chairpersons, spokespersons and spokeswomen, but never chairmen or spokesmen. Indeed, just about the only occasions when a man is referred to as a "man" is in matters of sexual crime.
Actually, I have no objection whatever to the neologism "ombudswoman." However, linguistically, it's entirely unnecessary, since - man refers to homo sapiens, but the new word seems to satisfy some sexually political need. And it keeps the girls happy, so what harm.
And we'll probably see a sexual quota in the Irish rugby team selection, rigidly enforced by the ombudswoman, before Irish rugby is played in a decent stadium. Many English rugby fans arriving at Lansdowne Road last Sunday assumed it was a bus-shelter; though the more agricultural thought it was a hayshed. Certainly, there hasn't been a stadium like it in England since Accrington Stanley went out of business, and the club chairman sadly folded up the corrugated iron of the main stand, put it in the back of his Austin Seven and went home.
When this column referred to the scandalous conditions in Lansdowne Road a few years back, the response was instant and effective: I got no more tickets for the press box. And that, of course, is the best way to deal with criticism.
Exclude the critic.
At least not being in the press box in the intervening years - up until last Sunday: nice curry, by the way - does enable you see how the other 99.9 per cent live; and over much of the ground, they live disgracefully. Lansdowne Road is run as if the Hillsborough disaster had never happened. The crowds leaving the terraces are so densely packed that one can almost be borne along simply by taking one's feet off the ground - until, that is, one reaches the staircase, which is a bloody massacre just waiting to happen.
A stadium cannot be built overnight, to be sure: and in the absence of an adequate structure - which will probably come about when the team is selected on racial and sexual grounds, with the ability to play rugby a useful bonus - there must be rigorous stewarding, perhaps with the terraces being evacuated at the end of a match in monitored sections.
But of course nothing will be done in response to native criticisms within Ireland of the lethal slum that is Lansdowne Road.
Typically, criticism of the grounds is only taken seriously when it comes from an Englishman: thus Paul Ackford's remarks aroused such a controversy last week, though he was only reciting the obvious which has been stated many times in the Irish media.
For all the hard-working lovers of rugby, who sacrifice so much time to coaching youngsters, there is nonetheless a ghastly culture within Irish rugby, typified by the well-pampered alickadoos, with their free bar and sumptuous dinners at the end of every match.
Why should they worry what it is like to spend an afternoon on unsheltered wet, windswept terraces, before being forcibly funnelled down steep concrete staircases? It doesn't happen to them: and nor will they be crushed to death when something goes wrong, as sooner or later it inevitably must.
But the indifference of that culture aside, why is there no general outcry at conditions in Lansdowne Road? What are we waiting for before we do something?
Or are to have a re-run of Hillsborough, followed then by a nice little tribunal or two to soak up whatever tiny lingering pockets of unemployment which might still exist at the Bar?
Perhaps it is up to the State to do something as I , no doubt, may find myself once again exiled from the press box. Moreover, the presence of the President and the Garda Band serve as State endorsements of Lansdowne Road; and very possibly such endorsements carry with them legal liability. Has anyone in Government thought about who will carry the financial can if somebody stumbles down the steep stairways exiting Lansdowne Road, and precipitates a disaster?
Emily, my girl: so far as I understand the rules of your office, they don't really extend to enforcing your authority over privately-owned stadiums. But there is another avenue.
Have the citizens of this country not some legitimate expectation of seeing the State protect their safety and their well-being at public events which that State endorses with the presence of the first citizen, and with its police force?
And is there not a civil service department which is responsible for overseeing safety regulations in public places?
So if no-one else is going to protect the long-suffering rugby fans of Ireland, might you not? Oh, by the way, if that was you singing last Sunday, you've got a lovely voice. And now I slink off to exile from the press-box for another five years.