TV VIEW:THE EXPERTS in the RTÉ studio in Croke Park had a good old giggle at Michael Lyster's expense when the anchor presenter joked of a spaceship hovering somewhere over his back garden at some juncture in recent times.

The implication was that if Cork were to have any chance in the All-Ireland senior hurling semi-final, then some supernatural intervention would be required and that these alien forces would visit the Cats’ dressing room and abduct a few of Kilkenny’s powerhouses.

Lyster couldn’t resist a “Beam me up, Scotty” quip which, by the end of the mismatch, was probably how everyone associated with Cork hurling must have felt.

Boys against men, and the only 40-foot-long barge poles in use were the ones to keep Cork at more than arms’ length. In fact, Kilkenny – as they have done in recent years – appeared to be the ones from a different planet. Before the match, commentator Ger Canning had wondered if it would be a “Drive for Five, or Close the Door at Four”.

And his co-commentator Michael Duignan had told us the odds of 7 or 8 to 1 on a Cork win was “all wrong”. Ah, by the end everyone was singing off the same hymn sheet and it was all to do with the brilliance of the Kilkenny team.

That theme of brilliance, about boys and men in amber and black jerseys was one that ran all the way through The Sunday Game Live, as the Kilkenny minors had the pundits in the studio drooling at the mouth in handing out their eulogies.

“Awesome,” ahem, “awesome” and, well, “awesome” was a favoured word to sum up the exploits of the Kilkenny Under 18s who, worryingly for just about every other hurling county in the land, was made up of names like Power, Walsh and Aylward.

Tomás Mulcahy referred to the “conveyor belt” of talent that comes off the Kilkenny production line year on year and the other sages in the studio, Cyril Farrell and Ger Loughnane, nodded in wise agreement and Loughnane felt this particular minor team was one that could provide an “inordinate number of players” to the senior team. A scary thought for everyone except those who usually leave Croker grinning like the proverbial Cheshire cats.

RTÉ do these gigs really well. It’s a slick operation, involving as many players as actually take to the pitch – from the pre-match build-up which had the ubiquitous Marty Morrissey chatting to former Cork manager John Allen and one-time Kilkenny supremo Kevin Fennelly at half-time in the minor match and then talking pitchside to Galway chief John McIntyre and Dublin boss Anthony Daly, as well as pre-match speculation from a host of former stars, among them Ger Cunningham and Joe Deane of Cork and Charlie Carter and Richie Power of Kilkenny.

If there was a point where there seemed to be information overload as we struggled to keep up with all the different points of views, chief among which was the Stepford Wives theory in Donal Óg’s book might have caused an added incentive in the Kilkenny camp, the whole affair was well-managed by Lyster’s slick movement from one panel member to another which made it seem as if the old chums were sitting on a bar stool shooting the breeze over a couple of 7Ups or Cidonas.

The consensus from one and all, though, was Kilkenny were ready to take another step on that journey towards an historic five-in-a-row.

If Mulcahy had started out by being “cautiously optimistic” when first appearing on our screens ahead of the minor match, it seemed as if the endeavours of Kilkenny’s minors only served to raise further concerns in his own mind whether there was one more big performance from Cork for the senior match.

So, Lyster wondered, was there any way on this earth Kilkenny could be beaten? He might as well have asked if anyone else saw the space ship hovering at that very moment over Croke Park.

“Have a cut at them?” said Farrell, without any real conviction. “They can’t back down,” said Loughane, arguing that Cork would need to get to move the ball fast, create space and retain their composure. Even he knew he was making a case that wouldn’t hold up in a kangaroo court.

“It’s a big ask . . . probably to win it, we’ll need to get goals,” said Mulcahy, who clearly felt there was a greater chance of, well, spacemen landing in Michael Lyster’s back garden.

Ger Canning was something of a Cool Hand Luke in dismissing “the shemozzle” that broke out before anyone had a chance to break sweat and reminded us a similar incident had occurred in the national league match between the sides earlier this season and that afterwards the two teams had concentrated on hurling. So it proved to be, and – as it has been in recent times – Kilkenny concentrated on the hurling better than anyone else.

By the end, the sages in the studio were all singing even louder off the hymn sheet. “It’s probably the best Kilkenny team of all time and therefore one of the greatest hurling teams of all time,” said Farrell, while Loughnane remarked: “What a team . . . we’ve never seen a team like this before, it’s as simple as that. How are they going to be stopped for the final?”