Channel trawl for cliffhanger proves unequal struggle

TV View:Perspiration glazing his face, Nick Easter stepped into the camera's field. "Congratulations, Nick, on the hat-trick. How was the game for you?" asked the television reporter.

The English backrow looked a little quizzical. You could almost see him playing the question around in his head: a hat-trick of tries . . . don't do that very often in Twickenham against the Welsh . . . er, is the answer to this one blindingly obvious or is it a trick question?

"It couldn't have gone any better," he smiled.

Call it bad luck. Call it poor judgment. Call it shocking timing. But all of the events upon which the remote came to rest at the weekend were processional and over before the end whistle, the final lap or the 18th hole on the fourth day.

Lewis Hamilton led from start to finish in the Formula One Grand Prix in Hungary. England crushed Wales 62-5 in a World Cup warm-up. Westmeath took the lead against Kildare in the Christy Ring final at Croke Park and never once needed to look over their shoulders. The Mexican golfer Lorena Ochoa needed to blow a six-shot lead in the final round of the Women's British Open at the old course in St Andrews if anyone other than her was going to take the title.

Showing it the respect it deserved, the BBC sent their elite team to cover the first Women's Open to be played at the home of golf, but the title had been won by Saturday, a day on which the players wore bandanas to stop their hats blowing into the sea.

Peter Alliss, Ken Brown and Maureen Madill provided the words of wisdom and occasional spikiness as the chasing group fell further and further behind Ochoa.

"This is getting painful," commentated the idiosyncratic Alliss as another player put her drive out of bounds or left a 40-yard putt 10 yards short.

"It's easy to say that with a microphone in your hand," replied the formidable Madill as if Alliss were demeaning one of the most prestigious events on the golfing calendar.

"I didn't mean 'painful' in a nasty way," Alliss quickly replied, having sensed the edge in Madill's voice.

It was difficult, nevertheless, to avoid the feeling Alliss was slightly underwhelmed by it all.

"Just six birdies from 69 competitors on the inward nine," he reminded us as the BBC closed coverage of the third day before Ochoa had even played the 18th hole. High winds and slow play were the reasons given as we searched for the red button on the remote that would have given us the closing minutes, but realised we didn't have one.

Kildare will have known how the rest of the field felt at the old course. The warm-up match before Kilkenny faced Wexford was played in rain falling in stair rods. Croke Park was under a deluge - hardly the optimum conditions for sweet hurling between two countries not particularly noted for prowess with the ash.

"It's going to be a test," said RTÉ's Marty Morrissey before coming in half an hour later with, "It's looking kind of easy, even at this early stage."

Morrissey might have been watching the golf or the rugby but as Westmeath made the most of their forwards' ability to point and goal when Kildare could not, this cup final for the minnows of hurling became more and more one-sided.

"A lot of teams will be looking at this and saying, right, if we can organise ourselves for next year we can have a right go at winning this competition," observed Anthony Daly, an astute and sympathetic analyst.

Few in Mexico or Rochfortbridge or even in the England World Cup squad will have given a hoot about the one-sidedness of the wins they were celebrating, nor could we ignore the fact the England forwards appear to have reclaimed their self-respect.

"They (England) are on a roll now and next week they want to go on and beat France," declared the former Welsh union and league star Jonathan Davies.

"One win is a roll then?" asked his anchorman, John Inverdale, attempting to take the mickey.

"For England it is," Davies shot back. And how true it was.

For events at the Hungaroring, we took liberties and, experimentally, turned down the sound. The unimportant discovery was that racing is all about the commentary and very little about watching the cars moving. It's about information: the tyres, the petrol consumption, the merits of six seconds of fuel against nine seconds of fuel, the weight of the cars full or half full, the handling, the tactics, the pit-stop team.

It's about what's going on everywhere, the combinations that made the 22-year-old Hamilton's solo run a success.

That's at once the beauty and soullessness of Formula One.