The No Rules series lives up to its promise as a thug-fest

TV View: Marty Morrissey could hardly look. "We have a serious battle going on here! There could well be blood spilt!" And that was before the ball was thrown in.

Yep, game two in the International No Rules series at Croke Park, where, astoundingly enough, 80,000-plus hardy souls turned up to watch what Martin Carney, back in the studio, described as "a thug-fest". You have to say, Martin was being a bit rough on thugs, comparing them to that lot.

He was, though, just talking about the opening 10 minutes or so, but he, Colm O'Rourke and Michael Lyster had kind of invited trouble.

O'Rourke: "I'm looking forward to a much more physical game."

Lyster: "We do want a bit of rough and tumble."

Carney: "Yes, it was so tame and so sanitised last week."

Be careful what you wish for.

The chat all week had pretty much warned us, if they couldn't get the man they'd settled for the ball, so you wondered what the 80,000-plus had turned up hoping, or expecting, to see.

When a large bunch of them walked out after the third quarter, was it because Ireland, as Marty put it, were getting the "mother and father of a hammering" (in points terms, not fist-wise), or was it because the off-the-ball stuff was done and dusted?

"The game has its critics, but you don't have to watch it, you can switch off the telly and go for a walk," said O'Rourke pre-match. Fair enough, but this was car crash stuff, you shouldn't look, but it's a divil to resist.

Two yellow cards for two cuckoos after a mere 49 seconds, for offences committed before we were even up and running. Is this a record?

"There's no rhyme nor reason to what's going on," said Kevin McStay, who, like Marty beside him, soon realised the real action was taking place off the ball, so there really was no point trying to follow the play.

"You'd want about four eyes to spot what's going on," said Marty, who, while focusing on the melee in the middle of the pitch, very nearly, like the TV director, missed the Australian goal at the Canal end.

"We've had two minutes, 48 seconds of all-out war," said Marty, as he surveyed the scene, bodies strewn around the pitch.

"Here we go again," said Kevin, as another brawl broke out in the centre.

Honestly, as the embedded war reporters in Croke Park yesterday, Marty and Kevin should be considered when it comes to the awards they dish out for this kind of thing.

Kevin did slip up, though. "It seems to be settling down a small bit, I hope I'm not speaking too soon," he said, and with that the camera switched to the referee and his attempts to separate Ryan O'Keefe and his bloodied nose from Seán Marty Lockhart.

By then, Marty told us, the scoreboard in Croke Park said 10 for Australia, while RTÉ had their tally at eight. Addled, no more than ourselves.

And did the 10 (or 8) refer to the number of players put out of the game, or were they talking points? Probably the former, this is the International Rules series after all.

And then, as good as their word, the Australians ensured Graham Geraghty's involvement would be short-lived, the Meath man removed from the pitch unconscious. Until then it was all marginally comical, but ah lads, enough.

At full-time Lyster told us the RTÉ switchboard had lit up with complaints after the first quarter. "Maybe there's a thuggish element in me, I didn't see what they saw in terms of their horror of the whole thing," he said. "It's part and parcel of what this is about. When it's not there in Galway last week we're whinging it's too tame, when it is there we're whinging it's too violent."

He was half right. If he didn't see the "horror of the whole thing" in the opening minutes, then an auld trip to Specsavers should be pencilled in, but by now we know the yob-fest is definitely "part and parcel of what this is about".

"That's thuggery," said Irish manager Seán Boylan after the game, "as it was out there today there is no future for it."

Back in the studio, O'Rourke had the grace to acknowledge that Irish players were behind two of the game's ugliest incidents, so "let's not take the high moral ground here".

Marty, meanwhile, reckoned the series "needs to be tweaked".

Ah Marty, let's forget about tweaking, "binned" would be the more prudent option. After all, even the bits between the thug-fest aren't worth watching.