Old passions trawled up from the red mists of time

TV View: You might have read last week about the former Portuguese prime minister Pedro Santana Lopes walking out of a television interview after the channel interrupted him to go live to Lisbon airport for Jose Mourinho's return from London.

"Do you think this is justified?" he asked. "This country is going crazy! With all due respect, I am not going ahead with the interview. People have to learn."

And with that he was gone.

He was right, of course. Sheer madness. It showed an extraordinary loss of perspective from the Portuguese, a bewildering set of priorities. We could only throw our stare heavenward, sigh and be grateful that we, as a people, are infinitely more well-adjusted.

So any way, did you watch Red Miston Setanta last night?

"We got more contact on this, of people's hurt and rage and anger and sadness and mourning, than we did following 9/11," said Marian Finucane, who, as presenter of Livelineback in 2002, had no option but to become the nation's Agony Aunt, considering half the nation was at the other end of the Liveline phone.

Truly, hell hath no fury like a football supporter whose nation's captain, stabbed in the back, was sent home from the World Cup/whose captain, a traitor, walked out on his country at the World Cup.

The general reaction to news that Setanta would be showing a documentary, based on Conor O'Callaghan's book of the same name, on this very subject went something along the lines of: "Oh for God's sake nooooooooo."

As with any major family rift the aftershock can be seismic, and really all that you can hope for is a consensus that all concerned agree to differ (so long as they accept you were right in the first place) and that the issue not be raised again.

The last thing everyone needs, really, is a documentary reminding each member of the family what abuse they had directed against them when the row first surfaced.

You worried, then, about the supporter who admitted he hadn't been to a residents' association meeting since he had the mother of all rows over Roy Keane at their dinner dance back in 2002. Perhaps he and the association were on the verge of reconciliation before Red Mistcame stamping into their lives with all the subtlety of the notion that Tony Blair could be a Middle East peace envoy, reminding them of how they felt about each other five long summers ago.

Although, it has to be said, Red Mistprobably just reminded them, and a fair old chunk of the rest of us, how we well and truly mislaid the plot at the time, even if we're on the side of all that is good and right. Forever more "What about the children, Roy?" will give us a giggle, even if at the time some of us thought it was a reasonable question.

The highlight, though, was that American gentleman who lives in Saipan and made the fateful decision to bring his 11-year-old son along to an Irish training session. "Dad, what's a ****ing b******s?" asked the kid, who'd overheard Keane's chat with the goalkeepers. The American sensed, (1) that he should have brought his son to the beach instead, and (2) that all was not well in the Irish camp.

Later, Steve Staunton told the world's press, after the infamous team meeting, that he'd never heard language like it, although you'd have to guess he heard something similar from the Irish supporters four years later in Cyprus.

But, five years on, just to prove how funny-peculiar this game is, we have Staunton in McCarthy's seat, Niall Quinn and Keane partnering each other up front in the north-east of England, and McCarthy in hot pursuit in the midlands. Whether they'd all attend an FAI dinner dance together it's hard to know, but they're getting on with it.

Anyway, we enjoyed Red Mist, immensely, almost as immensely as Jim Rosenthal's observation on ITV during that colour co-ordinated clash between the All-Blacks and Scotland: "For those who can't tell the teams apart, the All Blacks are the ones with the ball."

And we enjoyed watching the little bundle of footballing excellence that is Brazil's Marta during the women's World Cup. But her team's flair counted for nothing when they met Germany in yesterday's final. "They're very efficient," grinned Gavin Peacock after the Germans had retained their crown.

Over on RTÉ Noel King, the manager of the Irish women's team, noted that the Brazilians, for all their skill, "dive all over the place - they got away with murder in the semi-finals".

They did too. Good news then: women's football is now almost indistinguishable from the men's game.