So large was the RTÉ umbrella Damian Lawlor was holding above his head in Owenbeg on Saturday evening it could very easily have been mistaken for a Chinese balloon, although early on he put himself in greater danger of being downed by fans of a Canadian crooner than a US fighter jet.
“Hello there, you’re very welcome to Owenbeg … it’s windy, it’s lashing rain, and Michael Bublé is playing over the tannoy. It doesn’t get much worse than this.”
As Sgt Esterhaus used to say in Hill Street Blues, ‘let’s be careful out there’
Not to worry Damian too much, but last year there was a report about a fan who had a life-size cardboard cut-out of Bublé in her kitchen. And she’d cook dinner for it.
As Sgt Esterhaus used to say in Hill Street Blues, “let’s be careful out there”.
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Seán Cavanagh, meanwhile, felt panel debutant David Tubridy needed to be more careful when it came to the elements, suspecting from the recently retired Clare man’s attire that he’d never been to Owenbeg in February before. Seán was dressed for the Himalayas, David for a spring evening stroll in Doonbeg, so by full-time, he appeared to be suffering from hypothermia.
But while he was still able to speak, David reckoned that “Derry will win comfortably”, and so it proved, 11 points the margin of their victory.
Meath manager Colm O’Rourke was calm about it all, though, resisting mislaying his head over the performance, insisting that his crew are a work in progress, so there’ll be nights like this until they get themselves sorted.
But.
He’d hardly departed Owenbeg, though, when he was on our tellies again, this time having a chat with Tommy Tiernan
“It’d be much easier to be commenting on the game tonight than be actively participating in it.”
In time we’ll get used to Colm being on the other side of the mic, but for now it’s quite weird, the hunter becoming the hunted, that class of thing.
He’d hardly departed Owenbeg, though, when he was on our tellies again, this time having a chat with Tommy Tiernan.
Who knew Colm taught Tommy geography in Navan? Us neither.
Although Colm denied Tommy’s charge that he regularly threw him out of class for misbehaviour. You could imagine that happening regularly enough, though, Colm being a stickler for discipline, as he so often demonstrated during his playing days. (Hush now).
So, the pair of them were reminiscing about Navan in the good ole days, when the place was overflowing with characters. Like Flippance Sharkey. He had no teeth, Tommy told us, and whenever he went into Fox’s pub he’d put a cue ball in his mouth. Why? Tommy didn’t explain. And then Flippance would “head out on to Flower Hill and direct the traffic with his arse”.
By now, you’d be half worrying about all the Dubs who have moved to the county, what with toothless locals putting cue balls in their mouths and directing traffic with their posteriors. But Tommy and Colm only looked at it from a Royal County perspective, which was understandable, if prejudiced.
Tommy: “What effect has all the Dubs moving in to Meath had on Meath?”
Colm: “It’s ethnic cleansing.”
Tommy: “Meath is now occupied territory.”
Colm : “Well, in Navan we’re living on the West Bank any way.”
When Meath next win an All-Ireland with a team made up largely of Dub blow-ins, let Colm repent, and wrap the blue flag around him
Colm conceded this class of talk was not “politically correct”, but went on to provide further evidence that he needs to be open to change when he talked of his reaction to seeing Dubs’ flags in “Ashbourne, Ratoath and Dunboyne and Dunshaughlin”.
“There’ll be a great burning of them someday, we’ll gather the whole lot up and have a bonfire.”
When Meath next win an All-Ireland with a team made up largely of Dub blow-ins, let Colm repent, and wrap the blue flag around him.
It was, though, a mighty chat, the craic tremendous.
“I would have loved,” said Tommy, “when one of the times you were throwing me out of class to turn around and say: ‘One day you’re going to be on my chat show.”’
“That,” said Colm, “was a long shot at that stage”.
It was. But ain’t life gas the way it works out? Tommy probably now cooks dinner for his Colm O’Rourke cardboard cut-out.
