Hype springs eternal now we revert to Prem time

The Premiership is back and none too soon. The Premiership means never having to worry. Autumn to spring without frets, fears or phobias. Just lie back and think of England. Summer sports aren't like that.

I've been worrying all summer. For example, I've been worrying about Paula Radcliffe. I haven't told her yet but I love Paula. So naturally I worry about her. What if women athletes with Tom Selleck moustaches and Arnie Schwarzenegger muscles start wearing red ribbons around the track and insist on unfurling banners condemning EPO cheats? They'd have the artificially-enhanced neck, cojones in some cases, to do it. Suppose Paula sees some gal with a huge syringe marked EPO jammed into her hairy backside in the dressing room and then sees the same athlete tripping up over her red ribbons outside? What's a Paula to do? Is Paula the official athlete in the war against drugs, with provisional athletes, continuity athletes and real athletes to follow? I worry.

With the Premiership none of these things matter. You might as well worry whether Madonna has lost her virtue as wonder if the Premiership is all squeaky clean and above board.

I worry about Irish athletics too. The team went to Edmonton this month and was singularly awful. Fine. Ireland doesn't expect. But Pat Hickey wasn't there. It was distressing enough in Sydney when the general awfulness was directly attributable - as the Sports Council's subsequent tribunal discovered - to Hickey being on the same continental land mass, but if the team are now going to find ways to lose while Hickey is in other parts of the world we are in trouble. Perhaps the artists formerly known as BLE just aren't up to it. Perish the thought. I worry, though.

The Premiership utopia doesn't discriminate on grounds of nationality, continentality (do we describe eligible or ineligible Ryder Cup players as The Incontinents?). No way. The Premiership guarantee is this: No matter what race you are, what creed you adhere to or what position you play in, if you are approaching retirement and need one last big payday (yes, or two Fabrizio) then you are welcome. And not just at Chelsea. Give me your tired, your elderly, your huddled millionaires, yearning to breathe free money ...

And the Dubs. I worry not just about the future of the team itself but about all the ex-players. That is my burden. Are there enough newspapers for them all to have columns in? Somebody is going to get killed in the literary crossfire as it is.

Keith Barr has everyone pinned down with his machine-gun words in the Indo, rat-a-tat-tat every week. Paul Curran gets off the odd snipe in the Herald. Elsewhere, desultory shots ring out soon to be followed by the sound of sirens as another star takes a slug to the ego. Other outlets and forms must be found. We must look forward to Darren Homan's historical novel, Vinny's roman a clef, the anthology of Ian Robertson's Get Well Soon cards because there aren't enough media outlets to contain so many talents. Plus it's getting dangerous. There hasn't been such bitchiness and such stiletto wit since Dorothy Parker and the Algonquin round table set voluntarily disbanded.

Premiership diarists have no such worries. They run the gamut of hackneyed styles from a to b. The operative cliche in any piece "penned" by a Prem player is "don't get me wrong". It is a wonderful device. "Don't get me wrong, my old mate Trev/Kev/Nev still has lots to offer and we'll have a pint or three after next week's game, don't get me wrong, I don't drink as such as him, don't get me wrong that I am criticising the continental way of doing things. But to be fair ..."

Worry? I'd hoped not to live to see the day rugby found a competition that interests people. The European Cup is of course self-deluding hokum involving as it does precious little of Europe and permitting Ireland to enter entire provinces. It is the contrived Ryder Cup of the rugger bugger and I get a migraine every time I hear some fan with a microphone on the radio talking up Munster's chances against Toulouse(ditto when I hear that "give me the ball or I'll break your face" line which advertises that infernal rugby play. If a GAA play - like Anthony Daly's The Merchant of Ennis or Mamet's Glengarry Glengooley - were to use such a line there would be stern editorial condemning the oul gah in every newspaper..

I am encouraged, however, by the belief that the new-born Celtic League will soon be as big a draw as the All Ireland League and ordinary citizens like myself can go back to our peaceful, humdrum lives.

With the culturally dominant Premiership there can be no such qualms. Everyone loves it and rightly so. Like Noah's Ark, the Prem has gathered unto itself at least two of every species on earth, more in the case of donkeys who can play centre half, and it now looks like an Up With People video with young millionaires in it. No matter where you are the Prem's top team will reach out and caress you. A Man U superstore in D'Olier Street, a Man U link up with the New York Yankees, Man U tours of the Far East. The community outreach programme of high commerce. Bless.

I worry, too, about hurling. More specifically, the Guinness ads. The Guinness ads are the voodoo dolls of the sporting world; the worse they get, the worse hurling gets. Back at the beginning when Guinness was getting its hurling ads done in Dublin by ponytails who'd seen the game at least once, roight, hurling was awakened. Like a dead and decomposing princess kissed by an ad agency prince the game suddenly sat up straight and smiled. Offaly, Clare, Wexford, Clare, Offaly. From 1994 to 1998 not one All-Ireland went to Tipp, Cork or Kilkenny. It was exciting, it was golden. In Dublin we began to fancy ourselves. Then the effect of the London ponytails kicked in, all this talk about giants woke them up. Cork won in 1999, Kilkenny last year , Tipp or Galway this year. I can't stand it.

The Prem is back. Overhyped, overpaid and over there. Man U win it every year. Loyalty and decency are gone. Paul Gascoigne isn't. Yet still we love it. In a world of pain and worry the Prem is as soothing as a baby's dummy. I feel younger already.