Scraping the bottom of the barrel

Sadly, even Nick Hancock's childish pranks would have been a welcome diversion to some of what passed for sporting entertainment this past week. If proof were needed that there is a limit to what couch potatoes will watch, we had to endure imitation darts on the Beeb, speed skating on Eurosport, and heart racing angling on Sky Sports as the various television stations scraped the bottom of the barrel. The red "off" button has never been pressed so much.

At least RTE had some rugby to fall back on.

George Hook didn't get his wish about the Director General out in Donnybrook canning soap operas, and there is no news yet of a new series or fly-on-the-wall documentary about Keith Wood called Bald 'n Beautiful - (and I should know!!) - but at least they were able to keep the European Cup gravy train running. No Munster this time, and George was confined to studio analysis, yet Leinster did their part to make us all wonder, as Tom McGurk put it, just why "we've been sitting at the funeral of Irish rugby for the past 18 months."

Of course, Leinster's venture into Welford Road for Network 2's live match on Saturday afternoon wasn't exactly a trip into the Lion's Den, or the Tiger's lair for that matter, even if the English champions have an enviable record at home. "Even in the old amateur days, it was hard to win there," recalled Hook. "The Thomond Park of England," interjected McGurk. "Probably, but not as passionate," responded Hook.

So it proved to be. Although George continued his run of tipping the wrong side again (opting for a Leicester win, with fellow analyst Brent Pope joking that he'd just go for the team other than the one his colleague nominated), there wasn't too much to get excited about, especially in the first-half.

Indeed, referee Jim Fleming was left to provide more colour than the players. And it had nothing to do with his bright yellow jersey. At one stage in the first half, when players from opposing teams decided the match required some livening up, Fleming grabbed the culprits. "The last person I sent off before Christmas got two years," he warned them, adding: "So stop f-ing about!"

Earlier, the referee had halted what seemed like a perfectly good Leinster try by Emmet Farrell because of an alleged forward pass. "Can you believe it? Only the referee saw that," said a perplexed Jim Sherwin who had shown his own bias in the build-up to the match when, in interviewing Leinster coach Mike Ruddock, the commentator used the royal "we" when assessing what Leinster had to do.

Still, at half-time, Hook wasn't letting the referee off too lightly. "Apparently a white stick and tin can were found in the car park (before the match), so we knew Fleming was refereeing," he said.

Nobody in the RTE studio was too impressed with Leicester's decision to put out what was effectively a second-string team. "A B-team," stated Hook, while Pope claimed that the English team (who had no chance of qualifying and were saving players for crucial upcoming matches in their own league) had "made a mockery of the competition."

Whatever, Leinster did the business in the second-half and Sherwin reminded us that it was not enough for them to win but that they also had to score tries. They won, but two tries didn't look like being sufficient to earn one of the two best runners-up positions and, although Ward cited it as a "tremendous day for Leinster rugby, to come to the home of the Tigers and win," back in the studio McGurk - who can be a good devil's advocate - was saying there wasn't a "huge amount to get excited about, are we losing the run of ourselves?"

Pope probably put his finger on it when he opined that English rugby "is not as good as they like to think it is," which is something we can only hope is correct with the Six Nations Championship on the horizon.

At least RTE got the result they wanted in the match, which is more than can be said for the BBC who brought us the FIFA Club World Championship Final live on Friday night. It was boring, boring stuff - and you felt that even the commentators, and the studio analysts perched high in the Maracana, were ready to doze off at any moment.

Mick McCarthy, the Irish manager, was one of those charged with analysing the game for the Beeb and he was almost as frustrated as when his own team conceded injury time goals in important games. "I didn't expect to come to Brazil to see a team kill a game," said McCarthy. "I expected to see some flair."

Fellow football judge Alan Hansen has been known to get excited by scoreless draws, but this was an exception. "It just got worse and worse," said the Scot who sounded as if he wanted to be put out of his misery.

"There's a feeling of depression that they didn't manage to produce a show match," opined commentator Barry Davies, who still managed to get a bit excited about the prospect of a penalty shoot-out. But even this way of deciding the inaugural winners of the world championship ended on a damp note when Edmundo missed the final penalty, going closer to hitting the corner flag than finding the inside of the upright. "Oh," said Davies, who couldn't think of anything else to say, and a full 10 seconds passed before he added: "Unreal, a terrible penalty."

When he got his mind together, Davies was firm in placing the blame for the dreadful game at the feet of the Corinthians coach who, he reckoned, "will feel extremely justified about what he did and the way he made us all suffer."

It was slightly ironic, so, to find some of the flair and magic and brilliance that was missing in Brazil surface on BBC's Match of the Day on Saturday night. Match commentator Tony Gubba had almost made excuses for Arsenal by reminding us they were "absent so many players on international duty" and that the team was "riddled with `flu" before the understudies provided some of the beautiful moments.

"Sheer quality, it's world class," remarked Gubba of Frenchman Thierry Henry's finishing, while studio analyst Mark Lawrenson was impressed with Davor Suker's first goal. "You won't see that on the park tomorrow morning," he said. Which, of course, is why so many of these footballers are millionaires - and the rest of us have to work for a living.