Bolshie Brady stands firm but George is caught short(s)

TV View: The night ended with 30,000 contented Irish supporters strolling up the Champs-Elysées towards the Arc de Triomphe. Or, in this case, the Arc de Draw Useful. It had begun, though, with a trip down memory lane, courtesy of RTÉ 2's Ireland's Greatest Soccer Teams of the TV Age. Not the zippiest title the broadcaster has produced, but pure football gold all the same.

Among the highlights was Ireland's rather illustrious win over Brazil, when Liam Brady got the only goal. Fast forward 17 years and there was Brady beside Johnny Giles and Eamon Dunphy in the RTÉ studio, warming up for 90 minutes at the Stade de France. Bill O'Herlihy was in the dug-out, intent on getting his midfield trio to gel, hoping they could work as a unit.

They did, generally, but one of them seemed - how do we say it? - a little "individual". A "rowdy" would be too strong a word; "bolshie" might be better.

No, no: not Dunphy. Brady. It might not be entirely accurate to say that he is as "unconvinced" by Brian Kerr as Dunphy was by Mick McCarthy, but he doesn't appear to be a fully paid up member of the BK Admiration Society.

"I haven't seen conviction and belief in a Brian Kerr team in the big crunch games," he said, kicking off the evening. And while Giles and Dunphy said they were content with Kerr's starting XI, Brady said he wasn't.

"I don't like (Kevin) Kilbane in the middle of the field. You want passers in a game like this, people who can keep the ball. He gives it away far too much," he said in a warm tribute to the Everton midfielder. And John O'Shea "could be a weak link as well".

Half-time. "Now Liam Brady," said Bill, "you said you were waiting for Ireland's first complete performance under Brian Kerr - that must have been very close to it?"

"It was," said Brady. But?

"But if I was going to nit-pick, the play in last third didn't have enough quality."

Full-time. "Yes, it was our best performance under Brian Kerr in a competitive game." But?

"But in the last third we still lack a bit of quality, we could have got a result. And let's not forget Israel drew 0-0 in Paris as well. This French team is a poor shadow of its former self."

And then he said Andy Reid was too chubby.

Meanwhile, Dunphy - and you might not believe this - was reasonably content, telling Bill it was "a very, very good performance, a good night's work. If we were English, Bill, we'd be talking about winning the World Cup."

Just wondering - did Dunphy and Brady enter a personality exchange programme?

The match itself? Well, it was overshadowed, of course, by Shortsgate. Roy's shorts, that is. On the BBC, Jonathan Pearce and Mark Lawrenson knew Roy was struggling with the lower half of his kit and weren't overly alarmed when he left the pitch for repairs. Pearce suspected it was a "drawstring", as opposed to a hamstring, problem, and so wasn't too perturbed.

George Hamilton, though, was in the dark and almost fell out of his commentary box when Roy jogged off the field, assuming, we'd guess, that he'd just had enough and was "retiring" again.

He promised us he'd make contact with Tony O'Donoghue on the touchline as soon as possible to find out what was going on. The nation needed to be told. Except the nation already knew: unlike George, they'd seen Roy fiddling with his drawstring.

"Would you believe: it's an underwear issue," Touchline Tony told George. "He has a problem with the slip inside his shorts, he's gone to the dressing-room and he's had to change his jock strap."

There was silence while George and Jim Beglin wondered quite what to say next.

"Well, he's back, properly supported," said George, finally, as Roy re-appeared.

Over on the BBC, at half-time, Ray Stubbs suggested the FAI, at the behest of Roy, would have to hold an inquiry into the quality of its elastic.

"Absolutely," said guest pundit Dean Kiely, "the fallout from this could be immense."

Kiely, incidentally, was resplendent in his green check shirt and green tie, proving you can take the Charlton goalkeeper out of the Irish squad but you just can't take the Irish out of the Charlton goalkeeper.

Kiely is a top-notch pundit in the making, e.g. he noted that Clinton Morrison's first-half header "would have tested Barthez if it had been on target".

Meanwhile, Sam Allardyce was waffling on about Ireland's team spirit, at which point Kiely took a deep breath and said: "The days of 'Irish fighting spirit and not much else' are long gone."

After 90 minutes in Paris even Big Sam was inclined to agree.