TV View:Rugby's sixth World Cup finally got under way and ooh, missus, how butch it all was. There were so many shiny muscles being flexed and there was so much manly staring into the distance, it felt like watching Conan the Barbarian. All that was missing was some damsel in distress and a furry bikini. Except there wasn't a bosom in sight, except for the manly ones bursting with anticipation.
Opening ceremonies rarely fail to produce copious quantities of cringe and even the French couldn't quite manage to stop it happening again this time.
Hundreds of "acrobats" dressed like Umpa-lumpas lurched around Stade de France with all the athletic grace of the Young Munster B team.
They made faces at the cameras, no doubt intended to project rapt intensity at the prospect of the next four weeks. There was much heavy breathing, some of it came from Nigel Starmer Smith on Setanta.
"All the movements of rugby, reflecting the battle of life," gushed Nigel.
"Essential values of the game . . . the physicality, the combat - but also the respect . . . All very symbolic."
One could picture the scene around the country as the blazers nodded sagely, maybe even wiping a tear, before bravely stiffening that quivering lip. Rugby, the mark of a man, is in town, and even la belle France can't battle the overwhelming levels of testosterone.
"All very martial," suggested Nigel, approvingly.
Certainly, rugby sceptics won't have had their prejudices changed by last night.
"It's going to be hard, very hard, for Brian O'Driscoll's team," trilled the Today FM radio host Matt Cooper, who has been drafted in by TV3 to captain their World Cup coup.
Cooper's high-pitched delivery is not everybody's cup of tea but he kicked things off with a nicely dry line as he presented the station's analysts.
Jim Glennon, he noted. coached some of Ireland's players for Leinster "but despite that, their careers have prospered". Paul Wallace "has had his head down in scrums but has seen enough to be one of the game's best analysts". And Trevor Brennan, well, he's just Trevor Brennan.
It's a solid team but it might just lack a loose-enough cannon, someone willing to put his head above the parapet.
Setanta have Neil Francis, who is probably more likely to deliver a verbal lash. But what's really needed is George Hook. For better or worse, he is Mr Rugby to us, the great unwashed. His absence is crashing around our screens. But what TV3 did have last night was a quote.
"Brian O'Driscoll will tell us what he wants from tonight's game," breathed Matt. "And I can tell you it's a very honest answer."
"The outcome you want is as many injuries as possible, as brutal as that sounds," opined BOD and TV3 pumped this for all it was worth.
"The politically correct brigade will be up in arms over that," sniffed Glennon.
"He's being honest," drawled Trevor.
"There'll be column inches over that," warned Conor McNamara ominously during commentary. "Lots of them."
There's something wonderfully rugby about the idea that a player saying this might not really be the done thing. It's the old cliché - beat the lard out of each other on the field but then, and try and think of Hook saying this, forget about it and buy the guy a drink in the clubhouse afterwards.
O'Driscoll, normally the most cautious of media operators, won't be encouraged to loosen up when an obviously tongue-in-cheek observation is pounced on like this.
Good luck with the next interview, boys!
There was however a cosy familiarity about the expertise shown by the experts in terms of their tipping ability. It seems to be a rugby thing.
Dev was in power the last time Hook predicted a game properly and his brethren were similarly prescient last night.
"Argentina will go well for 60, 65 minutes, but France should win," Francis summed up.
And sure enough, France's expected canter to victory descended into trudging defeat.
