Haven't I been going on for years about the joys of listening to soccer on the radio? While football-focused Eamon Dunphy was reduced to giving listeners to The Last Word (Today FM, Monday to Friday) a long, long list of pubs that were claiming to have twisted their dishes on that rainy evening to catch the Turkish satellite (how many of them got the crowds in, then cited technical difficulties?), RTE Radio 1 was where the action was.
In fact, Five Seven Live (RTE Radio 1, Monday to Friday), transformed for Wednesday evening into Five Five Forty-Five Live - which, let's be honest, has a much better ring to it - even seemed to get a bit of a gee-up from the prospect of an early turn-over to Bursa. It sounded like the match commentary had started an hour early when an extraordinarily animated Emer Woodfull reported brilliantly from Belfast on the prospects of David Trimble being able to unlock a packed Unionist defence. You could nearly hear The Sash being sung from the terraces.
And after Woodfull's rapid-fire run through the competing names and strategies on the political programme, there was still time for the quiet focus of legal affairs correspondent Mary Wilson's interview with Sister of Mercy Nora Wall, in the light of the DPP's decision not to re-try her on rape charges. After the media feeding-frenzy at the time of the trial, this interview's entirely appropriate presumption of Wall's innocence was initially jarring. But what emerged was a woman who didn't sound especially angry or bitter, nor did she seem conventionally forgiving or philosophical. Battered, she sounded, simply battered.
Wall was sadly deadpan when she summed up her future employment prospects by filling in the three-year gap on her CV: "I've signed on at a Garda station twice a day. I've made 32 court appearances. I've had a six-day trial in the Central Criminal Court. I've served four days of a life sentence in the 'Joy."
Funny little country, this. Last Saturday I sat in the West Stand at Lansdowne Road, occasionally trying to tune in an excellent Radio 1 panel as they dissected Ireland's home performance against Turkey. Sometimes, though, any hope of hearing Pat Dolan and company was drowned out by the roars of an Irish "fan" two rows behind me: "I hope your mother died in the earthquake!" he cried at the Turkish 'keeper. "I hope thousands of you die!" he screamed at the small group of cheering Turks. (Seat number available to the FAI or Garda Siochana on request.)
Passionate fans, huh? More like patriotic gore. It's going around: when Con Murphy came on the air from Bursa on Wednesday, he told us about the 10,000 Turkish flags handed out free to fans before the match - presumably by someone happy to exploit the "national pride" coincidence of a terrible humanitarian disaster and a football game. Then, in the end, the game itself offered little enough for either side to be proud, patriotic or passionate about. Even Eoin Hand's complaining about the ref - "definitely a homer . . .(Doh!) We'll get nothing out of him" - was matter-of-fact rather than mortally wounded.
It would have been a nice show of respect, however, if the RTE team could have got the Turkish names right - not just in pronunciation, but in terms of which name a player should properly be called. For readers of The Irish Times or viewers of Eurosport used to more correct usage, it was disorienting to hear from Gabriel Egan that someone called "Yeltsin" was running the Turkish midfield - that crucial mental picture was suddenly of the Russian president staggering past Roy Keane. (More than a little distracting.)
Then we recalled Sergen, the classy number 10, and that his other name is Yalcin. A-ha.
Okay, adjust for the names and I reckon Radio 1 got it about right. Sure, it was wildly, partisanly optimistic: when the Turkish 'keeper ("Recber"?) went off injured, Egan mused, "I wonder does he know or think or have an inkling that things just might go wrong for Turkey tonight, and he doesn't want to get the blame." Janey, the man had scarcely seen the whites of Irish eyes.
But as someone who listens to plenty of soccer, I reckon Egan and Hand were a decent alternative to someone like the hyper-critical, self-regarding Alan "Shocking, Simply Shocking" Green of BBC Radio 5 Live; or like the layabouts on BBC Radio Scotland, who always sound confident that their listeners are at the match anyway with a trannie and only want to hear a bit of conversation between updates on other scores. Egan stuck to the facts and Hand was quick and succinct with the analysis, like your mate at the match.
HAND had got the best view of the after-match punch-up, but Con Murphy was being circumspect, signing off the programme by saying that his position in the stand was surrounded by Turks and he wouldn't say too much - but tune into the late-sport bulletin for more. That bulletin, when it came after 11 p.m., featured little more than a perfectly gracious-in-defeat Roy Keane.
Not to worry. Dubliners could spin the dial to Chris Barry (98FM) and hear how Keane had been viciously assaulted. And the phone-in was apparently inundated with calls from "Turks" (I'm going to go out on a limb and guess Gaiety School of Acting) who said the Irish lads had it coming because of the disgraceful racist treatment that Turks get in Dublin. You can imagine the rest of the dignified exchange of views.
I particularly enjoyed the alleged Turkish fan who complained in his halting English how "Turks are treated badly all over Europe, especially in Germany. If a German team came to Turkey they would get a worse beating." Neither he nor Barry (ha!) seemed to realise that Germany did play in Bursa last year. But then, you don't pick up that sort of info in drama class.