SPORT ON TELEVISION

LAST Tuesday night BBC1 repeated More Than A Game, a worthy attempt to get behind the scenes and into the heart of football in Ulster, and more specifically, in the Down inter-county camp and in the rivalry of two neighbouring clubs in south Armagh.

A worthy attempt, as stated, but ultimately a strangely Hat one. The film was attractively shot and finely edited, but it only occasionally succeeded in defining just what it is that is supposed to make Gaelic football different from other sports.

From this evidence, certainly, managers the world over have only two or three variations on the motivational Team Talk in the dressing room "Losers get nothing", was one example.

Perhaps the programme makers, who clearly had a passion for the subject, felt that in opting for a subdued approach the romance would shine all the more brightly. It rarely did.

Down's Ross Carr was speaking evenly some time after their 1994 win over Dublin. "All we did was play a game of football, but at times it's a lot more than that, it's not a matter of life and death. But for 70 minutes, for a lot of people it is." And who could argue? Even us semi-neutrals got a bit weepy as the McCarthy Cup trundled through Clarecastle. But Carr's easy presentation would move only the converted.

STILL, there were insights, particularly in the fierce rivalry of Mullaghbawn and Crossmaglen. Here we were at the heart of the GAA, the parish, and the intensity was palpable.

Noel Murphy, of Mullaghbawn, was sincere in this hyperbole: "The presently warriors go out in their football kits to defend their locality and do their best for them." But surely that's true of most sports at local level?

His colleague, Peter McDonnell, got closer to the heart: "It's not just the men on the field. It's the folklore, the heritage, it's many a father has reared us on to do, to go out and represent his family, his parish on the field of play. It might seem to exaggerate the significance of it somewhat, but when you're reared in an area like this here, and you've been drilled in Gaelic football since you were knee-high, it's not exaggerated in the slightest."

It was also clear that the programme makers had decided they would attempt this homage to football without recourse to the political implications. But Eddie Hughes, of Crossmaglen Rangers, touched on it:

"It was always seen as a way of identifying ourselves, identifying our Irishness through the culture of the GAA, which would entail all aspects of it, both through the playing fields right through to the dance and the music and the language."

As the British army helicopter set down in a glowing dusk behind the Cross clubhouse, you couldn't help but feel that the passion shared by Mullaghbawn and Cross carries a different tinge from that of Laune Rangers and Dr Crokes.

WHEN Gareth Southgate missed his penalty, Insp Jim McNeill of the Met, waiting outside Wembley, turned to the camera and said: "Uh-oh."

In Wednesday's Inside Story: EuroCops 96, we went behind the scenes as the English police prepared to take on the hooligans of Europe. By the end of the show, it was clear the producers had been as badly caught out as the coppers.

We spent a good part of the programme watching the police take what seemed to be effective, pre-emptive action. "Intelligence lies at the core of the police effort," we were told.

But when England went out, the yobs came out big time. Not just at Trafalgar Square, which we heard about, but right across the land. One poor Russian lad was stabbed repeatedly because he was mistaken for a dirty Hun.

The film raised but did not attempt to answer another question: where did the press go? Several hours of mayhem across the nation went either unreported or, at least, under-reported. It seemed no one was prepared to sully the comfortable image of the Great Summer of Sport, with England At Peace as Football Returned to the Fans.