Table football may be the way to go with all this stormy aimsir

TV VIEW:WE THOUGHT of Jim Stevens yesterday when we tuned in to TG4 for the club championships and saw a near horizontal Micheál O'Domhnaill on our screens, the presenter knocked sideways by the wind and hailstones in Dr Hyde Park, his lips so frozen they were only fit to mumble something about the unbelievable aimsir.

It was unbelievable, too. But more unbelievable was that the Castlerea and Corofin supporters, huddling under trees for shelter from the demented elements, stood their ground instead of saying, "Lads, enough - we're off to the pub". Hardy folk.

Jim Stevens should count himself lucky that, unlike O'Domhnaill, he does his work indoors.

Although maybe we're making assumptions here - surely you can't really play table football outdoors? Well, certainly not in Dr Hyde Park on a November Sunday any way.

"I'm the world's only table footballer commentator," Jim told CNN, and CNN, no more than ourselves, didn't seem all that surprised that he had no peers.

Unfortunately we didn't get to hear Jim at work, so we don't know how he does it.

"Plastic man on middle pole spins and the ball goes to plastic man on the pole to the far left and he spins and smashes the ball past the spinning plastic man on the goalkeeping pole"?

It doesn't sound much like the beautiful game, to be truthful, although Arsene Wenger would argue that commentary extract could be taken from a Stoke City match.

The thing, too, is other than spinning like a Ferris wheel the players don't actually move, certainly not forwards, which the elderly among you might observe was what they used to say about Ray The Crab Wilkins in his playing days.

Jim, though, is evidently passionate about what he does.

"When I was in school I became a professional table football player in the 1980s and decided to combine the two skills, and proved to be pretty good at it naturally - I honed the craft over the years," he said.

"I guess there isn't anyone else in the world prepared to make the sacrifices necessary - in other words, to make as little money as I do in order to do something that I really love."

But at least he's warm and dry and doesn't have to endure "Angela's Ashes weather", as Tom McGurk described the conditions in Limerick on Saturday evening. There was just no getting away from the unbelievable aimsir all weekend.

Before we kicked off, the panel discussed the "ELVs", which left those of us who don't know anything about these things wondering if George Hook would analyse the pixies and leprechauns next. Although, many would say . . .

But no, these Experimental Law Variations - or new rules, as other sports might call them - had the panel all animated, in an angry kind of way.

Brent Pope tried to help us out by having a chat with Dave McHugh, IRFU referee coaching and development manager, in the hope that he would "demystify" the changes. They had met before, apparently.

"I know you well because you sent me off under the old rules," said Brent.

"I did, yeah," said Dave.

Any way, as far as we could work out, before the ELVs you could have fewer fellas in the lineout as the other lot but not more, but now you can have more fellas in the lineout, but not fewer, unless they have more in which case you can't have fewer because then they'd have more and that would be mad. That's the gist, but don't quote us on it.

Tom blamed Rupert Murdoch for the whole thing because his organisation (Sky, we're guessing here) want the game made more understandable for those of us who wouldn't know an ELV from Elvis, an allegation that left us all shook up because we can't even understand the simplified rules either.

George, meanwhile, feared all these changes would signal the end of a place in rugby for "the little fat fella in school", that it would become a game for athletes. But already change has come: there was divil a big fat fella in the Irish line-up against Canada.

The centres, in particular, had the look of athletes, Tom noting that when Luke Fitzgerald was born "we reckoned the Three Wise Men were coming down the Merrion Road".

His partnership with Brian O'Driscoll?

"God and God's son," said Tom, stopping just short of blessing himself.

By half-time Tom had switched to the despondent side, describing what he'd witnessed as "Angela's Ashes rugby".

"Shannon would beat this team," he said of the Canadians, when, to be honest about it, 15 spinning plastic men on poles might have done it.

"I think we learnt that Ireland under Kidney aren't much different from Ireland under O'Sullivan in that they struggle against inferior teams," said George at full-time, to which Tom, not unreasonably, replied: "He's only had them a week!"

Stormy aimsir ahead for Declan Kidney?