Day One. A 100-foot long white polystyrene caterpillar wriggled down the tunnel at the King Baudouin Stadium, flanked by 22 people tied up in velvet sacks. The Milky Bar kid, wearing red silk pyjamas and matching slippers, then emerged from the mouth of the butterfly wannabe and skipped on to the pitch, looking a bit wide-eyed and bewildered.
You and me both, kid.
Soon after, eight members of the Ku Klux Klan, dressed up as Michelin men on stilts, appeared, followed by a ginormous white inflatable ball with another 22 people, decked out in ice cream cones, anchoring it to the ground. Sometimes it's hard to avoid thinking that God created opening ceremonies to punish us for our sins, although you'd imagine we'd suffered enough after the do at the start of France '98 (during which, he revealed on Saturday, ITV's Des Lynam "lost the will to live"). But no. There was more.
A big lad (a 15-metre high inflatable giant on a hovercraft, to be exact) appeared, like they do, and there was you thinking Niall Quinn was on Irish duty in America.
He moved across the field with all the speed and mobility of John Hartson and Europe held its breath. Then he swung a leg at the inflatable ball and whoosh, from nowhere, 4,000 balloons, as opposed to Walloons, filled the air. This, according to UEFA's website, was "the portrayal of the relationship between a small boy and a man as they discover . . . an innocence dormant in every human being", an explanation they, presumably, came up with after a pre-Euro 2000 fact-finding visit to an Amsterdam `caf'.
Des, on the other hand, told us that what we were watching was a portrayal of a child's wonderment at attending his first football match.
"It's obviously taken them a long time to plan all that, it's definitely not something you'd do overnight," said ITV's Ally McCoist of the opening ceremony. Mmm, dunno Ally. A dose of soft drugs, a long stretch in the evening and, voila, that's precisely what you'd come up with by five in the morning, if you weren't careful.
Belgium v Sweden. In truth Belgium, like opening ceremonies, are soft targets. "They were always the bores of Europe," as Billo Herlihy put it, ending his hopes of a moneyspinning transfer to Brussels after the next election. Eamo Dunphy agreed, urging "people who want to go out, to go out", a suggestion that must have gone down a bomb in the RTE Ratings War Department.
Kick-off. Over on ITV Big Ron Atkinson had just finished telling us how Roland Nilsson was one of the best, no-nonsense, safe-as-houses, bet-yer-granny's-life-on-rock-solid defenders he'd ever had the pleasure to work with when a Swedish defender by the name of Roland Nilsson gifted Belgium their first goal. Hate that.
Half-time. RTE? "Lousy football," said Jim Beglin. "Pretty dreadful," said Gilesie. "Sub-Phoenix Park stuff," said Eamo. ITV? "Sooooperb," drooled Des, which left you assuming he'd have an orgasm if he ever wandered into the Phoenix Park of a Sunday morning. Doctors differ, television viewers of football die laughing.
Day Two. Turkey v Italy. Eamo tipped the Turks to win, resulting in street demonstrations in Istanbul and the bookies' decision to stop taking bets on the Italians. The result? Well, water is wet, rezoning in Dublin can lead to corruption, Kevin Keegan is an optimist, Mikael Silvestre has a problem with the concept of being in the right place at the right time, in a football-defending sense and the Michael Schumacher ad for shampoo isn't terrific. How many statements of the bleedin' obvious do you want? Italy won, of course.
"You predicted Turkey would win," said Liamo `Chippy' Brady, the corners of his mouth curving upwards, ever-so-slightly. "Yes, that was one of my predictions," conceded Eamo when he turned up yesterday evening as . . . presenter . . . of Network Two's Euro 2000 programme.
Now, while conceding that there is no end to Eamo's talents, putting him in charge of the show, so that Billo can rest his okey dokes, is like promoting Billy Bunter from the back row of his biology class and putting him in charge of his mates.
In other words when he sat at the edge of his armchair beside Chippy (and we mean the `edge' - those red velvet cushions were so bumpfy there was nowhere else for Chippy and Eamo to sit) he felt the need to be . . . ugggh . . . nice and didn't once publicly fall out with his erstwhile Mark Vivien (err, Foe). "Thank you for not exposing my lack of football knowledge on air," Eamo even said to Chippy at the end. Lads? We can't be having this, you're playing like Sweden. Get stuck in, will ya?
France v Denmark. First 20 minutes? Sumptuous, as Delia Smith would put it. Patrick Vieira couldn't make the French starting line-up, Stig Tofting made Denmark's. What's it they say? The goods of this world are unevenly distributed.
Lilian Thuram? Godlike. Stupendous. "A bulldozer with attitude", said ITV's Peter Drury, as opposed to a timid, diffident and retiring bulldozer. Back on RTE Eamo said France had loadsa options on the bench, including Christophe Dubarry. Granted, he corrected himself immediately (Dugarry) but still, if he turns up in shiny new leather shoes today we, the public, will demand a plugs-tribunal.
Holland v Czech Republic. Zzzz. The Parades Commission would have stopped the match before it even got under way, so Orange was the attending crowd. Holland even left Marc Overmars on the bench.
