Own up: how many of you thought the two American fellas in their dapper petrol-blueish Universal Sports shirts were greeting us from Staidiam BBVA Compass i Houston as Gaeilge in the early hours of Sunday morning?
And spent the next two minutes saluting their awesomely hospitable linguistic efforts before realising it was actually TG4’s Marcus O’Buachalla and Eoghan O’Neachtain doing the talking over the Universal Sports feed?
Morto, like.
Not as morto, mind, as the fairweather rugby friends who didn’t stay up for the match, or worse, being possessors of social lives, were out galavanting. So, having missed it all, they settled back to watch the recording once they fell out of their beds yesterday, after avoiding every form of media so they wouldn’t hear the result.
Time on the clock? 70:46.
Score? Eire 15, Stait Aontaithe Mheiricea 12.
Tension? Unbearable.
Viewers: “We can’t watch!!”
Indeedin’ they couldn’t: “For Your Information – End of Programme – Press Back Up to return.”
Hate that.
Not to brag, but some of us – notably those who got the ‘End of Programme’ message just as Rafa Nadal and Novak Djokovic’s encounter last week reached epic proportions – know better now, so lest we drifted off and the match overran, set An Aimsir Laithreach to record too.
Although, and this is where it gets complicated: Anyone who set An Aimsir Laithreach to record, because they actually wanted to see the forecast as Gaeilge, got nine minutes, 54 seconds of a rugby match in Texas, and divil a sight of a prediction for the meteorological conditions of the day.
Recorded a win
At least Ireland, for your information, recorded a win, even if there were times when the hosts' tackling was so chunky, Less Kiss must have been tempted to 'press back up to return' (home).
What did we learn from the tussle? Well, for one, American captain Todd Clever needs a hair cut; two, Texans are very rude when Ian Madigan does his kicking thing; and, three, the day microphones are kept away from the Irish team while they're singing Ireland's Call really can't come too soon.
Other than that, not a lot, although rugby people might be a little more scientific in their appraisal of it all.
An unsatisfactory enough display by our fellas, but not half as displeasing as Ger Loughnane found the Dublin hurlers’ performance to be on Saturday, especially in the second half. “It’s pure constipated hurling,” he alleged, “they’re so inhibited in everything they do.”
Michael Lyster leapt to the defence of the Dubs, noting they got “a laxative of sorts” in the second half when they got a goal to put them in the lead, but Ger was having none of it, declaring the draw to be a fair result – “not because either side deserved to lose, because neither side deserved to win”.
Still, with a nod to both the aimsir and the closeness of the contest, he did at least concede that, “like Joe Dolan”, Dublin and Wexford had “sent the crowd home sweatin”.
Ger was back on duty again yesterday for the meeting of Kilkenny and Offaly in Costa del Tullamore, the build-up to the game featuring a chat with Shane Dooley and his Da Joe.
Brothers Joe, Billy and Johnny are retired a fair while now, of course, which came as something of a relief to a Corkonian acquaintance who, after a torrid enough day at the hands of Offaly a few years back, let rip the cry: “How many feckin’ Dooleys are there?”
No end to them, as Shane’s emergence – cripes, six-ish-years ago – proved. “A better hurler between me and my father? Probably me, I’d say,” he grinned.
Meanwhile, over in rainy Paris, Rafa was out-Spaniarding David Ferrer, his progress towards his eight French Open title only interrupted by a topless red-flare-wielding man protesting against gay marriage. And which one of us didn’t expect that?
