TV View: Oddly enough it was only last week that Fifa president Sepp Blatter suggested that national anthems should no longer be played before games because they simply give unpleasant chaps an opportunity to make their unpleasant voices heard through whistling, booing, jeering and the general all-round deafening utterance of obscenities.

After Saturday Sepp might be tempted, too, to ditch the tradition of holding a minute's silence because, as Lou Macari put it on Setanta before the game between Manchester City and Liverpool, "how can you expect 30,000 football supporters to keep their mouths shut?"

So, yeah, after the bleak auld week that was in it, it was a touch unfortunate that Setanta found itself at the City of Manchester Stadium on Saturday afternoon for its live Premiership game. When Pat Dolan finished his tribute to George Best in the studio we went over to the ground for the minute's silence.

Seventeen seconds later the referee gave up, blowing his whistle to signal the end of the 'silence', which had been marked by shouts along the lines of "qyersha ****ing mihsha ****ing kljdsz" from the stands. Nice.

Sepp would, though, have been cheered by the respect shown for the national anthems at Lansdowne Road on Saturday, although, in fairness, ever since Daniel Timofte had that penalty saved by Packie Bonner the mere mention of Romania simply brings a sporting smile to our faces. So why would we boo them?

And why would they boo our anthems - for, indeed, we have two - when they're sung by "a nightingale with a very large . . . diaphragm", as George Hook told us in advance.

Any of ye who had a crystal collection near the telly when Elaine Canning climaxed on "seo libh canaidh Amhrán na bhFiann" will be hoovering up shards of glass for years to come.

But that's kind of where the afternoon's entertainment ended, apart from the odd try here and there. "This Irish team should blow these guys away," Hook had told us. "By a 100 at least," said Tom McGurk, mislaying the run of himself. "No, not 100," said Brent Pope, "but we've got to be looking at 40, 50 points."

In the end we had to settle for 43-12, with George concluding that "this Irish team couldn't offload a flat-bed truck".

We weren't quite sure what this meant, but it sounded rather damning.

"The reality of it is we are spending more on Irish rugby than the Romanian gross national product," George continued. We should mention at this point that George was sick so he wasn't in the best of form. That, perhaps, accounted for his tribute to the Irish pack. "They are Dobermans with dentures. This is the most toothless Irish pack I have seen in a long, long time." "Do you lie awake at night dreaming of these things?" asked Tom. "He's nothing else to do," sighed Brent, and with that George departed for his sick bed.

Which is where Shamrock Rovers supporters have been since Friday, when their beloved club was relegated to the first division, live and exclusively on Setanta. In Irish footballing terms this is akin to Beethoven having to appear on the X Factor, where he'd be told by Louis Walsh, "Yeah, you're reasonably gifted, but your image just isn't quite right - and you need to cover Bee Gees tunes instead of writing your own, Moonlight Sonata just doesn't have a catchy chorus."

The only good sporting news of the week was Darren Gough's progress in Strictly Come Dancing, some consolation after Dennis Taylor was so brutally axed in week five when the judges needed counselling to recover from his samba to La Bamba.

To be honest Goughie - who bowls for England when he isn't fox-trotting with Lilia Kopylova - was in need of a pick-me-up after his last television appearance failed to inspire. Although, to be fair to him, he wasn't the worst on the cricketing edition of The Weakest Link.

"In dancing, what 'G', meaning to move something in a circle, is a word used to describe the hip rotations popularised by Elvis Presley?" asked Anne Robinson.

"Eh, jive," replied Devon Malcolm.

"In which Orson Welles film was it said, 'Switzerland . . had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock'?" asked Anne. "Eh, One Flew Over the Cuckoo Clock," replied Matthew Hoggard.

Still doesn't beat our favourite: '"Which German city is also the name of a type of perfume?"

"Berlin?"

Or, indeed, "An illegal challenge in football sounds identical to what word for chickens and poultry?" "Tackle?"