Sense of gloom pervades as George plays predictable card

TV VIEW:AH NOW, that wasn't good. Ryle Nugent had reminded us that yesterday was the start of a potentially sparkling sporting year, with the Olympics and Euro 2012 among the feasts on the menu, not to mention hardy annuals like the GAA Championships and Cheltenham.

All we can hope is none of them will inflict on us as much pain as Leigh Halfpenny’s late penalty.

As if we haven’t enough troubles, like. There was much talk last year about how our sporting stars lifted us, like a bridge over banjaxed water, when we were most in need of a lift. And that’s very true. But it’s also true last-minute losses to, say, Welsh penalties can make our waters seem even more troubled, drop us a notch or two down the misery scale. So, to be honest about it, sport doesn’t always have an entirely positive impact on our collective mood. Did you see any smiling Irish Chelsea fans yesterday? Case rested.

And initially, on the rugby day that was in it, it seemed like the telly was faulty – although the RTÉ panel had been perfectly audible there seemed to be little sound coming from the Lansdowne stands. But upon being alerted to Ross O’Carroll-Kelly’s tweet, the screwdriver was put back in its box: “Anyone with any information on the whereabouts of the atmosphere at the Aviva, can they contact gardaí in Irishtown?” All a bit gloomy, then, on and off the pitch. And – need it be said? – in the RTÉ studio. And that was even before the game.

“Ireland are the least inventive, most predictable team in world rugby,” Eamon Dunphy’s best friend George Hook had, uninventively and predictably enough, told us, going on to draw an analogy between a big-bosomed actress-type-person and the Irish XV. “They’re a bit like Pamela Anderson: when they’re good they’re great, when they’re bad they’re awful,” he shared with us, leaving us a bit flummoxed. Was he referring to Pamela’s acting performances, or fluctuating bosom size?

The panel didn’t probe. There was no response at all from Tom McGurk, Brent Pope or Donal Lenihan, not even a half-grin. They just moved on. Maybe it’s the way he keeps telling ’em? Anyway, despite concerns about this predictability and lack of inventiveness, the panel, to a man, forecast a narrow Irish win, revenge for Wellington and all that, which, Ryle told us, was “17 weeks and one day” ago.

Half-time, 10-5 up. Party time? “They’re playing like drains . . . their plan? Pray for a miracle,” gushed George. Brent and Donal, naturally, weren’t quite as cheerless, but they weren’t high-fiving either, seeing enough to convince them that the second half would be less than a doddle.

That Bradley Davies spear tackle? “I don’t like to see red cards, they ruin the game,” Jonathan Davies started over on the BBC, but he added a “but” just in time, otherwise the telly would have ended up in the bin. Some day you’d like to see a policeman walk on to the pitch at a time like that and make an arrest. That might turn the hooligans back in to gentlemen. Keith Wood was equally bamboozled by the referee’s failure to produce a card of the red variety, but aside from that, he was in a tizz over the spectacle. “A truly phenomenal advertisement for the game,” he said, Jonathan and Jeremy Guscott nodding enthusiastically. “A fantastic game of rugby, it was brill-i-ant,” said Jonathan. But, huh, he would, wouldn’t he?

They were less buoyant back on RTÉ, George concluding you couldn’t really praise Wales because Ireland were so rubbish. And then he displayed some heartfelt sympathy for Declan Kidney over his testing post-match interview, as if Kidney’s day wasn’t bad enough. You’d imagine he’d prefer sympathy from the devil.

A bit of a downer, then, but not even that defeat, and the funereal nature of it, would have dampened Peter Casey’s mood. You know, the horse trainer whose Flemenstar romped home at Leopardstown, a success that prompted him to tell Tracy Piggott, live on telly, how he intended, well, celebrating. He’s a YouTube sensation, as he was told on RTÉ on Saturday night. “I don’t know nothing about tubes, but I heard all about it, thousands up on top of thousands,” he beamed. Earlier in the week he told the world’s media “the only tube I know is in a tractor and the only net I know is putting it in the back of the Kerry net”.

Hopefully, then, he didn’t tune in to Setanta on Saturday evening, where he’d have seen his beloved Dubs put the ball anywhere but in the Kerry net. Hands up, though, how many of you thought Dublin were giving debuts to players by the name of “Listen”, “Talk” and “Change”? Morto.