TV View "This is year one, 'AD', after David," said Richard Keyes, in his typically breathless manner, as he introduced Sky Sports' coverage of yesterday's FA Community Shield runabout in Cardiff's Millennium Stadium, writes Mary Hannigan.
The only available air was emanating from the mouths of the Manchester United supporters who greeted Djemba-Djemba's arrival on the pitch with a tuneless chant of "so good they named him twice".
The "AD" comment was, of course, a fair observation, but if it had been put to Alex Ferguson he'd simply have airbrushed history and said: "Well, we wish David May all the best, but his only significant contribution to the club in the last nine years was to get into every photo taken at the end of our Champions League win, despite being an unused sub - which is pretty much what he was throughout his time at the club." Which is very true.
(Incidentally, by all accounts this couch shouldn't have been able to see the game at all - on Saturday NTL was asked when their threat to switch Sky Sports to their digital service would be realised. "It has been switched, you can't get it on analog anymore," they replied. "But, eh, I'm looking at it this very minute on analog." "Oh, right, well: there are only a minuscule number of homes that can still get it on analog.") So, then, while this couch continues to resist the temptation to switch to digital and the delights it offers (e.g., wall-to-wall Metallica on Kerrang), it enjoyed, in a minuscule kind of way, the game we oldies once knew as the Charity Shield.
"The greatest show on earth," Richard said of the new English campaign. "Rarely have we started a season with so much anticipation and expectation."
Well, that isn't entirely true. Richard starts every season with so much anticipation and expectation that he almost spontaneously combusts (exclusively on Sky), to the point where NTL might promise live coverage of the event on their extreme sports channel in the hope of attracting more viewers to their digital package.
Anyway, the BIG game featured two new goalkeepers, Jens Lehmann for Arsenal and Tim Howard for Manchester United. "It iz unpossible to fill out hiz footsteps," Lehmann told Sky before the game, when asked about David Seaman. A lovely tribute.
Both lads did fine, Howard maintaining the tasty form he showed on United's evangelical American tour, which was all about spreading the football Word. Their charity knows no bounds. (Result? United won, of course. Another day, another trophy.)
During that American tour, by the way, a splendid banner was displayed (live and exclusively on MUTV) by a Baptist minister outside the Seattle stadium where Celtic played United - it read: "Soccer nuts - Fornicators - Repent." We will, promise.
The only offensive part of that banner was the word "soccer", a term with which European souls are proudly unfamiliar. Another distasteful term in the opinion of your average "foreign" football-obsessed supporter is "summer". Although, as one English newspaper pointed out recently, there have actually, only been five foreign-football-free days since Wolves beat Sheffield United in the first division play-off final on May 25th. Since then internationals, the Toulon Tournament, the South Pacific Games, the Confederations Cup, the Interstate Cup, the Gold Cup and the Asia Cup, to name but a few, have filled the gaps in our useless lives.
Summer, then, has been less desolate than usual, made even less bleak by the dizzy brilliance of the GAA games we've seen these past few weeks.
"Listen, at the end you're breathless," as Ger Loughnane put it at the conclusion of Cork and Wexford's draw in the All-Ireland hurling semi-final yesterday. Ah, wonderful stuff.
At half-time Loughnane questioned the Cork camp's professionalism ("How Mickey O'Connell is still on the field absolutely beats me"); by full time his fellow panellist Tomás Mulcahy came mightily close to telling Loughnane to insert his doubts about his fellow county men up a location where the sun rarely shows its face.
Loughnane had also alleged that Cork lacked savvy, which, on the whole, was like accusing Roy Keane of lacking passion. The last Corkman to be told he was savvyless set his pet tyrannosaurus rex on his accuser. In the second half Cork showed, well, savvy and won the game. Almost. Rory McCarthy drilled a goal home, just as we were putting the kettle on, to ensure that we'll have a bit more of Cork v Wexford next weekend. No complaints. So good they'll play it twice.
