It takes two worried men to save a not-so-worried soul

TV VIEW:AT FULL-TIME Tracy Piggott told Declan Kidney she had aged 10 years in the closing stages of Ireland's 14-13 trashing of England at Croke Park, which left the rest of us envying her and asking: "Only 10 years?" Indeed, by the time the final whistle sounded some of us had advanced so rapidly in years we made Methuselah seem but a boy.

Methuselah, by all accounts, fathered a child at the age of 187, a feat as heroic as that achieved by the 1948 Irish Grand Slam-winning rugby team.

The question of whether or not the men of 2009 could keep alive their hopes of emulating that accomplishment by beating England exercised, naturally enough, the minds of the RTÉ panel.

Tom McGurk: “Are you worried George?”

George Hook: “No, I’m not worried.”

Conor O’Shea: “I’m just worried because he’s not worried – that worries me.”

Brent Pope: “That worries me too – and the nation worries when he’s not worried.”

George: “Actually, to be honest, it worries me that I’m not worried.”

Brent: “Everybody’s worried Tom, which is worrying.”

But “no worries,” appeared to be Keith Wood’s approach to the game, “Ireland by 10 points,” he’d predicted over on the BBC, where he’d started the day by interviewing Kidney.

“I’ve known him for over 10 years and I still know absolutely nothing about him,” Keith had told John Inverdale before they played the tape. “How do you get your head right on the day of a game,” he asked the Irish coach. “I read Keith Wood’s autobiography,” Kidney grinned, at which point Keith laughed and waved a white flag. Inscrutable, he concluded.

“I’m not sure I’m any the wiser after that,” said Inverdale. “Nor I,” said Keith, shrugging his shoulders.

Mind you, earlier Inverdale had left two gardaí none the wiser outside the new Lansdowne Road when he quoted Brian O’Driscoll to them: “Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.” They exchanged blank looks, and Inverdale departed before being frisked for an illegal substance.

But before the main event we had to endure Scotland v Italy. “What are Scotland missing year after season?” asked Tom. “About 13 players,” said Brent.

Half-time. “Terrible,” said Conor. Brent disagreed. “Awful,” he said.

George leapt to the defence of Scotland and Italy, insisting that sport – lest we be naive enough to believe otherwise – wasn’t about entertainment. “If it was,” he said, “cricket would never have got off the ground,” a statement that, frankly, left some of us offended, not to say stumped.

Any way, off we went. “Heave, Ireland,” said Bono and The Edge on the BBC, which was nice. Time for one last interview with English coach Martin Johnson. Are we alone, when we watch this fella charm his way through interviews, in thinking of David Feherty’s description of Colin Montgomerie? You know, “he has a face like a bulldog licking piss off a nettle”.

Ireland won. As easy as that? Not entirely quite. At half-time a dejected Keith said the game was “like Wimbledon, kicking the leather off the ball”, “no ambition from either side”.

Over on RTÉ George was telling his panel-mates that he thought “England were very creative”, which might have led him to being frisked for an illegal substance if those two gardaí were in ear-shot. “It’s like an old-fashioned arm wrestle,” said Brent, wondering what George was on.

But, as we mentioned, Ireland won. At full-time George emoted, quite spectacularly, about O’Driscoll’s performance, which was, possibly, even more heroic than Methuselah fathering a child at the age of 187.

“This was, at a time that is difficult for this country, an extraordinary example of what Irish fortitude, courage and sheer bloody-mindedness can do – would that the Taoiseach could do it at the Ard Fheis,” he said. And with that Brent examined the ceiling.

A lot done, more to do. “I’ve never met a soft Scotsman,” Kidney warned Tracy in their post-match chat, when they looked forward to part four of the Grand Slam odyssey.

The very great Jack Kyle then popped up on the RTÉ panel, declaring that the 1948 team had “dined out long enough” on their Grand Slam, it was time for the young lads to do the business.

And that, of course, would be heavenly. And we were reminded of that place yesterday when we watched Spurs lose the League Cup final on penalties. As Colin Farrell’s character put it, in a scene from In Bruges, while discussing Heaven and hell with Brendan Gleeson, “purgatory’s kind of like the inbetweeny one — you weren’t really shit, but you weren’t all that great either.”

Like Tottenham.

“George leapt to the defence of Scotland and Italy, insisting that sport – lest we be naive enough to believe otherwise – wasn’t about entertainment. ‘If it was,’ he said, ‘cricket would never have got off the ground,’ a statement that, frankly, left some of us offended, not to say stumped