Giovanni hailed as rainmaker while Pope wanders in desert

TV View: All this turmoil. You'd be worn out. You even reach the stage where you wonder if Giovanni Trapattoni and Teddy Holland should just do a swap and be done with it, Giovanni taking charge of the Cork footballers and Teddy taking the helm with Keano, Duffer and the lads.

Granted, it's not a watertight solution, although the image of Giovanni patrolling the touchline in Páirc Uí Chaoimh in midsummer, bedecked in his Bainisteoir bib, is a very lovely one. Not to mention the prospect of his post-match chats with Marty Morrissey.

But that will remain a dream, probably. For now we have to wait for peace, love and understanding to break out in Cork so Paschal Sheehy can get home for his tea (he appears to have been stationed outside a "Cork city hotel" for four years now) and for the FAI to get Giovanni to sign on the dotted line.

For the consensus would seem to be that Giovanni's the man. In the RTÉ studio anyway.

"It's a no-brainer, Bill," said Eamon Dunphy when Bill O'Herlihy asked him to do a spot of comparing on the CVs of the Italian and Terry Venables.

"What about the view that Trapattoni's negative?" asked Bill. Dunphy proceeded to read out all his honours (Trapattoni's, not Dunphy's), which took quite a while.

"It's a good job he wasn't positive, Bill; everybody else would have packed up the game," said John Giles.

"It would be the greatest thing to ever have happened Irish football in my lifetime," said a near tearful Dunphy of the prospect of Trapattoni taking the job, both he and Gilesie insisting there was no rush on the FAI at all, at all, so long as they got their man. A fair point entirely, though we don't want Trapattoni arriving on the morning of the Georgia game in September.

"You are?" "Day-me-en Duff." That class of thing.

So that's one managerial position sorted out, ish. What of Eddie O'Sullivan?

"He's like John McCain, he's right when he's right and he's right when he's wrong," said - need you be told? - George Hook.

Some time later: "He's the Edith Piaf of rugby, I regret nothing!" John McCain and Edith Piaf in one fell swoop. Eddie is many things, including versatile.

Brent Pope, though, had a good feeling about Saturday's game, and having earlier in the day predicted Wales would beat Scotland by 12 points - inaccurate just by three - he has our ear. George, on the other hand, said Scotland would win "by a Paterson kick". So.

Tom was cautious, though. He'd endured enough Parisian pain to ever dare hope again.

"We've seen the French guys. We've seen the frogs and the sun shining on them and pissing past us at 100 miles an hour," he said, leaving his panel momentarily speechless because they couldn't quite believe he'd said what he'd just said.

George thought there was "a real possibility that we'll get wiped out" and was "genuinely fearful for Irish rugby".

When asked by Tom what wisdom he might share with the players about to leave the dressingroom he replied, "Rosary beads."

"And if somebody today starts talking about pride I'm going to vomit. Pride has nothing to do with this. The Apache nation had pride and look where they are. The Bushmen in the Kalahari had pride and look where they are," he said, before giving yet another vote of confidence to our young Ulster lad: "Andrew Trimble is big, strong and young - that's great if you're saving the hay, but it won't actually help you break down a French defence."

Brent admitted that by now he was lost in the Kalahari, but found his way again just in time to forecast a French victory: "But not by as much as people think."

He was, of course, right.

"Well, I'm going to be in tears if this keeps up," said Tom after the post-match interviews with Eddie, Brian O'Driscoll and Donncha O'Callaghan.

"I absolutely refuuuuuuuse to be carried away on this tiiiiiiiiide of emotion," said George, who had a message for O'Driscoll, the lad in his innocence having expressed hope the display would "silence some critics".

"You turn in another few matches and I'll be silent," said George.

"No you won't," said Brent.

He was, of course, right.

Sunday.

Tom: "Have we turned the corner?" George: "No, but we can see where the corner is." Conor O'Shea: "We're turning around the corner." Hook: "You're going around the bend, with your foot on the accelerator. What might be around the corner is a ditch."

Perhaps, though such are George's powers of prophecy what might be around the corner is Giovanni in a Bainisteoir bib.

Or Andrew Trimble being named player of the Six Nations. At which point George will buy a one-way ticket to the Kalahari.