Sporting streak to be forgotten

Saturday evening in Lansdowne Road was one of those something-for-everyone-in-the-audience occasions. Big Niall Quinn happily rose to the occasion and performed graciously for his 35,000 birthday guests. Our strikers remembered the key part of their job description and began scoring again. Roy Keane rounded off his herculean World Cup campaign with another goal, and David Connolly proved that given 20 easy scoring chances he's at least as deadly as you or I.

There was prolonged, gratuitous Mexican waving from the crowd, even though Mick McCarthy had come out against the practice during the week. There were some fireworks - well, five of them - and there was a return to the olΘ, olΘ, olΘ business of the early nineties. We rounded off the evening with some boastful taunting of the Cypriots to the effect that they'd never beat the Irish.

And there was a streaker. We have to settle this streaker business before we advance any further in world football. Normally the less said about these things the better, but this demands comment. Has globalisation come to this? On a big sporting occasion, do we really need some poor, goose-pimpled gobshite exposing his grey, mortified flesh to paying customers in order to make us feel like a real nation? Isn't this greasing the path for membership of NATO? Is this the thin end of the Nice Treaty wedge? And, politics aside, if it is to be done, can't it at least be done well and with dignity?

This was perhaps the worst streak in history. This was pathetic. Naff. As streaks go this was a defeat to Macedonia. This was a Posh Spice B side. This was Ronan Keating's Fairytale of New York.

From the safe distance of the pressbox, the goofy insurgent looked like a shiny, pot-bellied pig wearing a flapping pair of grey boxers and ankle socks while walking on his hindlegs. He got to the centre circle and sat down on it, appearing to rub himself on the spot like a dog wiping himself on grass. I think I captured the mood of a generation when I said, "Oooooh, yuck!"

(I should set out my credentials here. Despite lucrative offers, I myself have never streaked. My employers forbid it, fearing I'll lose my market value as a carnival freak if I show myself on TV or in front of big crowds. However, I have seen previous streaks, one in the flesh and several on television. I don't know much about streaking but I know what I like. This wasn't it.

(Once, as an anthropological experiment during that time when I was an inquiring young scholar, I went to a Colours rugby match in Donnybrook. I was standing on the halfway line listening to a choir of the overprivileged singing about what they would do if they had, say, the wings of a sparrow and typically, the sparrow's wings wouldn't be enough if they had been also blessed with the posterior equipment of a crow. For those of you unfamiliar with this hymn of feathery yearning, what they would do is this: they would take these deadly biological gifts and they would fly over the rival college and drop faeces on the hapless student body below. A campaign, in other words, of mutually assured defecation.

(Anyway sorry, I'm digressing from my digression, I was enduring the singing and watching the rugby if you tell anyone that, I'll have to kill you when this burly, curly-haired dude wearing nothing but a UCD Orts Scorf materialised on the far touchline and began to streak, zig-zag fashion, across the pitch. I soon realised that, just as drunks always locate me in bus queues, the nude dude's estimated point of exit was precisely where I was standing.

(I will say this for the dude. He had style. He had rhythm. He had timing. He wore no dirty underpants. He wore no socks. One other thing. He knew a little about marketing: the dude had the dangly bits of a horse. I clearly remember that, as he vaulted over the railings right beside me and disappeared into a waiting overcoat, many of us feared that he would actually injure somebody with his equine gift. All fun and games till somebody loses an eye, isn't it, dude? Try explaining that wound to casualty in the Mater.

(On Saturday evening there were some among us in the pressbox who admired the fellow for his courage in choosing Roy Keane's workplace for his larking. Indeed, the fool headed straight for the centre circle where the cobra flick of Roy's Diadora boot was most likely to connect with - well, to connect with his own centre circle. Anyone in their right mind would have headed for the Irish central defence where everything moves a little more slowly.)

Anyway, my point (and I do have one) is this. Why is sport subjected to this supposed jollity? Christen me curmudgeon, but if there is so much tabloid-sized fun to be had out of running about the place in your cacks, or sans cacks, why can't it be done at gatherings where people need cheering up? Get back to me when you have streaked at an Eircom shareholders meeting. Or during The Cassidys. Or at a Mick McCarthy press conference. Speak to me again when you have streaked at a Progressive Democrats annual conference. Then come to me wearing nothing but your medal. When you have flashed past the Conference of Religious Superiors I think you have something to tell your children about.

And if you must do it at sporting occasions, do it well. If Ireland's efforts in qualifying are rewarded with an exciting trip to Tehran, I will take my hat (and maybe my tie) off to you if you make the supreme sacrifice and run starkers across the pitch there. And what about the winter Olympics? Nude luging would restore some credibility to both streaking and luging. It's just a suggestion.

Come back and tell me it's fun when it is an equal opportunities thing. There is not nearly enough streaking by the elderly, the infirm or minority groups. The obese and the anorexic are severely under-represented, as, sadly, are supermodels, prominent trade unionists and supreme court judges.

Until then, until Naomi Campbell, Des Geraghty and Mr Justice Ronan Keane have tried it at GAA Congress, give us all a break.

Or we'll set Roy on you.