Different-ball-gate a travesty but we can't blame ref for everything

TV VIEW:WELL, IF you want to look at it in a more positive light, at least different-ball-gate didn't happen two years ago in Cardiff, so that's something. Beyond that, though, it's hard to find an upside to Saturday's heinous travesty of sporty justice at the Millennium Stadium.

Conor O’Shea, though, wasn’t playing ball, different or otherwise, refusing to allow us the comfort of feeling so aggrieved by the tyranny of it all that we could dub it “Thierry Henry: The Sequel”.

Yes, he described different-ball-gate as “absolutely unforgivable”, but he broke off our Jonathan Kaplan-directed chants of “Are you Martin Hansson in disguise?” by reminding us Ireland were so utterly “abject” they didn’t really have any right at all to feel sorry for themselves. Mind you, he thought Wales were just as dire, so there was a pair of them in it.

Over on the BBC, though, John Inverdale was more sensitive to our affronted feelings, professing himself to be a touch gobsmacked by the allowing of the try-that-shouldn’t-have-been.

“Thank heavens,” he said, “that neither Alex Ferguson nor Arsene Wenger is in charge of the Irish team because I cannot imagine how they would respond to what has happened here.”

It was a fair point. It, surely, put Robin-van-Persie’s-two-yellows-cards-gate in the ha’penny place. And if Declan Kidney had Ferguson-esque tendencies, Kaplan, you’d assume, would now be undergoing reconstructive surgery to his mid-region.

Not that Kidney wasn’t simmering in his post-match chat with RTÉ’s Hugh Cahill. He didn’t actually erupt, but for a moment we feared he’d do unto Hugh what Vesuvius did unto Pompeii. You know, come awful close to removing any trace of him from Google Maps.

“The lineouts today were a huge improvement, the penalty count was down, but Ireland still lost the match. Why was that?” asked Hugh.

“Wales obviously scored more than we did,” he replied.

Tom McGurk wasn’t at all happy with that. “Is that an appropriate answer,” he asked his panel, who split along predictable enough lines.

Eg: “NoooOOOOooooo,” said George Hook. “Well . . .” said Conor and Brent.

What about the decision to replace Ronan O’Gara with Jonathan Sexton?

“Ireland conceded seven points straightaway when Sexton came on and O’Gara went off,” said Hugh.

“I think that’s an erroneous bit of reporting . . . I think you need to check your facts,” Kidney replied.

Oh cripes.

“Has Declan Kidney lost his way?” asked Tom. “YeeeeEEEEeeeeeSSss,” said George. “Well . . .” said Conor and Brent.

Tom even wondered out loud if it was actually Eddie O’Sullivan’s team that had, after all, won the Grand Slam. That it just happened to have Kidney at the helm. That class of rugby revisionism prompted us to flick back to the BBC where Inverdale, bless him, was still focussing on different-ball-gate.

Keith Wood and Jonathan Davies weren’t entirely convinced Kaplan was Martin Hansson in disguise, reminding us that touch judge Peter Allan had reassured the South African it was the one and very same ball (and in fairness, it’s hard to tell them apart).

Spookily enough, though, earlier that day Hook had shared his premonition with us. “The referee is absolutely vital today, he is politically aware, he wants the World Cup final, he is not going to upset the apple cart – he will penalise one side and I suspect it will be the away team.”

By then, it has to be said, we were struggling to take his sense of foreboding seriously after the latest episode of the Hook Files.

They’re usually shot in an underground carpark, but this time it looked like the boiler room in Lansdowne Road.

It was at that point, as we studied the moody freeze-frame close-ups of George’s exasperated visage, that we started humming: “A man in the dark in the picture frame, so mystic and soulful . . . a voice reaching out and a piercing cry.”

Honest, it was that Ultravox Vienna video revisited. George Hook as Midge Ure? Who’d have thunk it? Wacky out.

Anyway, it was a dark day. Apart from the bit where Italy beat France, as unlikely a sporting outcome as, dunno, Ireland beating England in cricket?

Magical stuff, it has to be said, especially when you saw an Italian behemoth or two dissolve into tears at the full-time whistle.

“They almost had me crying too,” Brent sniffed.

George saw it coming, though. “The way France play is a bit like champagne and high heels, there’s a price to be paid,” he’d said at half-time. He was, oddly enough, correct. Italy’s sparkly wine and loafers did the trick.

You couldn’t but be elated for the Italians. Well, until Tom rudely interrupted our applause with: “Let me say it now: October 2nd, Dunedin, Ireland v Italy, World Cup.” Oh crikey, Vienna. We can but hope that it’ll be an entirely different-ball game.