Katie was nowhere to be seen but Ronnie’s poetry kind of made up for it

So, how many of you vowed never to watch sport on telly again after the All Greens had victory pilfered from them at the death in Lansdowne last week, leaving us feeling like we'd been pummelled by a Kiwi? If it's possible to be pummelled by a Kiwi.

Cripes, that many?

The only thing for it, though, is to tentatively dip your toe back in the water again, otherwise you'd have no light relief from Central Remedial Clinic top-ups and MasterChef: The Professionals and their kid goat recipes. And bone marrow and dates. You'd have needed a bottle of Milk of Magnesia just to recover from the spectacle.

A recipe for success, of course, is Katie Taylor, her two fights in just the two days promising to be a nice antidote to that Lansdowne torment, but it wasn't to be, divil a sign of telly coverage.

Twitter, at a time like this, is your only friend, a sign of these modrin times, but “punch”, “left hook”, “jab, jab”, “whoah” is all very well, but when you have no clue who’s doing the punching, left hooking and jab jabbing, you’re at a loss.

Friendlies
Should What Katie Did Next have been on our telly screens? You could very reasonably argue no, the bouts being non-competitive friendlies (Mira Potkonen and Caroline Veyre: "Ha! Good one!"), but still, we oft see live coverage of two men watching a fly speedily crawl up a wall (no offence to Formula One), so it might have been no harm to show us some Katie. Especially when, come Rio, we'll all be claiming we followed her every step.

At least we saw some of the legend that is Cora Staunton yesterday, Gaelic football's Katie Taylor, thanks to TG4's coverage of the All-Ireland club championships – although she appeared a little off her game, contributing a mere 1-5 of Carnacon's 1-6 tally against Donaghmoynen in Carrick-on-Shannon.

By then the channel-flicking had reached epic proportions, leaving Cora for a minute or three to monitor Rory’s progress in Australia over on Sky, all the while trying to avoid the ‘result’, only to discover on another channel flick that he’d ruined Adam Scott’s day and had won his first tournament in 2013. Hate that.

“A few crazy Irish men in the sun,” said the commentator when the crowd whooped after Scott sent his approach to the 18th into the middle of next week, and true enough, Scott felt less Home than Away, the crazy sunburnt Irish spontaneously combusting when Rory sank that putt.

“The boy is back,” said the Sky man, the lesson on the day, of any day, ‘form is temporary, class is permanent.’

Like the Ronnie O'Sullivan man. Confession: there wasn't a whole heap of channel flicking to the Beeb's coverage of the UK Snooker Championships at York, but Ronnie's marginally contemptuous first round dismissal of Rhys Clark was a sight to behold. T'was 6-0 in the end, so comfy a trip for our Ronnie he opted to use Rhys as target practice.

“From the second frame my focus was on a 147. The school fees have been paid last week and I thought I’ll get a bit of Christmas money this week.”

Poetry
That's why it's hard not to love Ronnie: he (a) makes potting balls on a green table look like poetry and (b) admits every sunken colour is an extra Christmas pressie for his kids. "Xbox One!!!!!!!," they probably cried when he sent Rhys in to the middle of next week.

No prizes, though, for Ross on RTÉ's new quizzy thingie Division, hosted by Anne Doyle, his appearance short-circuited by his answer to the question: "Which Man United legend type person talked about prawn sandwiches?".

"Alex Ferguson, " he replied, dismissing the Roy Keane option, and a nation gasped. It was akin to not knowing kid goat, bone marrow and dates belong in the bin, not on a plate.