Nothing but balls all the week

Who am I to doubt his wisdom, but the last week has convinced me that Karl Marx was wrong. Religion is not the opium of the masses, football is. Crikey, every time you turned on the old black box in the corner you were met with somebody diving in search of a penalty. Even referees got in on the act, tripping over footballs with all the grace of an elephant in a china shop.

Wall-to-wall football, and it wasn't even a World Cup week. From one part of Europe to another, the gurus in Sky, RTE, ITV, BBC and Eurosport led us a merry dance across the continent as the beautiful game brought us weird and wonderful sights. Goals, of course; saves, too; dives aplenty, even St Michael Owen got in on the acting, and members of the Leeds United squad were wondering if they were practising for roles in Disney on Ice as they tip-toed round a frozen pitch in Moscow on the eve of their subsequently abandoned UEFA Cup match. And David O'Leary looked even more concerned than usual.

Yet, despite all the glitz and the glamour, along with all the ploys of the marketing men and media mandarins, the soul of the game came to us on Friday night from, as Jimmy Magee put it on Network 2's live game, "the Stadium of Light . . . Inchicore . . . west Dublin." Some might say the folk out those parts have pretensions to grandeur, what with Dixieland music in the background and flares in the sheds, but the reality came across as a genuine desire to deliver something special.

The end product, of course, is judged by the quality of the football itself. Nobody could deny the effort, work-rate and robust tackling from the players in the first-half of the match between St Patrick's Athletic and Cork City, but the quality left a lot to be desired. Not so after the break, however, and, in remarking on Trevor Molloy's strike, Magee opined that, "If David Beckham did this, you'd be talking about it for a week". Do you know what? Jimmy was right.

Indeed, Magee's wonderfully evocative language was the perfect foil for the match itself. The double act of Magee and Eoin Hand, the former Republic of Ireland manager, was a bit like chilli and ice cream: Magee providing the hot, colourful touches, Hand the cold pragmatism. You'd wonder did he ever offend anybody in his life?

On one occasion in the second-half, when John Caulfield's shot swerved like a car after a tyre blowout, the Memory Man observed that it "looked like a deflated balloon", or earlier, when the same player was being shown the yellow card, he remarked, "You had better stop talking John, or you'll be seeing traffic lights".

It mightn't have been the Premiership or the Champions League, but it brought us to the heart and soul of the game. Like, in the first half, the girl by the corner flag who, whenever Cork's Ollie Cahill went to take a corner, would reach out as if to pinch his bottom. Where would you get it?

But there was a serious side to the game too, as analyst Charlie McKeever reminded reporter Darragh Maloney at the half-time break. "It would be good for the league, more important, for Pat's to get a win," he said in his emotionless Ulster accent, "and I think there is a goal in this game." Somebody was listening, because that's the way it panned out.

Shortly after the wonder goal, Molloy tried again from further outfield and you could feel Magee marvel at the audacity of youth. "He's like a poker player who's got a bit of a kitty and feels anything might work," he said.

When Molloy set up Alan McNevin for the clincher, Hand told us that it was "curtains for Cork in this game", and indeed there was no way back for them.

As to the championship though, the curtains are still very much open. Which may not be the case for Manchester United, who crashed to Fiorentina in the Champions League on Tuesday night when, again, the RTE craving for anything to do with the round ball was apparent.

It was a night for ABUs to gloat, though, as the champions of Europe behaved like anything but the champions of Europe.

"They're behaving like schoolboys in the park who have just lost the ball," remarked commentator George Hamilton as the United players argued and scowled rather than played the sort of football that last season brought them to new heights. And, in the end, they lost 2-0 to the Italians.

"An abject performance," remarked Hamilton before handing back to the studio guests who were in no mood to soften the blows being landed on United.

"What on earth's gone wrong?" asked Bill O'Herlihy, and the cognoscenti waded in with all their might.

"They weren't hungry enough," said Eamon Dunphy.

"There was no spark, there seemed to be a lack of commitment," said Joe Kinnear.

"If you're not up for it, you're dead," continued Eamon.

Joe agreed. And you felt they could stay there all night and run around in circles in an attempt to find an answer to United's problems.

By Thursday night, soccer's equivalent of the GAA's back door in hurling was highlighted when Arsenal - dumped out of the Champions League - were still chasing European silverware, this time in the UEFA Cup. Back at Highbury, instead of Wembley, Sky's Andy Gray told us that it was time for Arsenal to put Nantes "under pressure, to test the nerve of this young side".

Almost 80 minutes later, it looked as if Nantes - down to 10 men - would defy all the odds, clinging on, as they were, to a one-goal deficit. Two late goals from Arsenal changed things. "They've discovered 90 minutes is a long time," said a suddenly up-beat Martin Tyler, although, by the end, Gray wasn't as buoyant. "The sort of night where the result has been better than the performance," he said. And he was right, as Arsene Wenger's scowling face confirmed.

And, yet, the image of the footballing week was nothing to do with scowling faces or goals or saves, but rather - as BBC's Match of the Day on Saturday night showed - a referee bringing a smile to everyone's face, except Coventry City manager Gordon Strachan's, by tripping over the ball in the Premiership game between Coventry and Leicester. Sometimes, the lighter side of things is required to take the edge off the serious business.