TV VIEW:WHILE YOU couldn't, need it be said, condone his actions, it was hard to be too critical of Ronnie O'Sullivan at the World Championships last week when he somewhat intemperately raised his middle finger in the direction of a red that had refused to drop in to a middle pocket.
Which one of us hasn’t, occasionally, taken out our fury on an inanimate object, like, say, a cheese grater when more shavings from your knuckles end up in the salad than parmesan? Such outpourings of discontent can certainly make you feel better, but they have a fairly negligible impact on the target of your ire. For that reason, then, there’s really no point in anyone berating the inanimate objects that appeared on the Stamford Bridge pitch yesterday, although hopefully the Stoke “defence” will find knuckle croutons in their next salad sandwich.
Jamie Redknapp, though, preferred to look at the game in a more positive light, focusing on Chelsea’s goal-scoring rampage rather than Stoke’s iffy impersonation of a grown-up football team.
In fairness, Jamie should be commended for his positivity because he had endured a harrowing week, having been stranded in a five-star luxury resort in Barbados thanks to Eejaf . . Eyjo . . . Eejif . . . Efjaf . . . the Icelandic volcano. Indeed, next to the impossibly bronzed Jamie, Gary McAllister and Richard Keys looked topically ashen-faced.
The day before Richard had welcomed Dwight Yorke in to Sky’s spot in the roof of Old Trafford, casting a disbelieving eye over his shiny silvery suit and dotty shirt before asking: “Did you get dressed in the dark this morning?” While this could have been construed as harsh, Dwight seemed to take it as a compliment, telling Richard that he always likes to make an effort. “Must try harder,” sighed Glenn Hoddle’s face.
Incidentally, speaking of greater effort being required: doff your caps to ITV’s Steve Rider for being heroic enough to run in yesterday’s London Marathon – but we suspect he might have raised a middle finger to his former colleagues at the BBC. As Steve approached the finishing line they put on our screen the placings for the race’s celebrity participants: Steve was two spots and 59 minutes behind a caterpillar.
As far as we could work out, though, he finished ahead of a banana, Thomas the Tank Engine and six Fat Controllers, two men in a camel suit and a donkey, so he shouldn’t let that souped-up caterpillar get him down.
Perhaps if Steve had been whipped all the way around the course – or certainly over the last furlong – he’d have shaved 59 minutes off his time?
“It’s very simple, you can’t talk to a horse, you can’t say ‘right horse, it’s time to go faster please’,” Ruby Walsh explained to Robert Hall when they discussed this whipping business at Punchestown last week.
Ruby suggested that those of us who would, say, prefer to see horses treated with all the loving care of a My Little Pony – pink ribbons, permed manes, manicured hooves and all – are “people not educated enough to make the right decision” about the use of the whip, which is very probably true. And, granted, that dream of ours about one day seeing horses whipping the bejaysus out of their jockeys is probably fanciful.
Robert, though, tried to reassure us about the whip, one of which he had in his hand. “You really couldn’t do too much damage with that,” he said, before beckoning Ted, Ruby’s Da. He then proceeded to whip the palm of his hand, prompting Ted to recall the days Brother O’Grady hit him “a few slaps of a leather whip” in school. Honestly, if you’d tuned in late you’d have been, well, curious.
You’d have been a bit befuddled the next day, too, if you weren’t there from the start. Say you switched over to RTÉ from Deal No Deal. The sight that would have greeted you? Robert and Ted jumping the Punchestown fences – without horses.
“It’s all for health and safety, it’s the way the thing has gone,” said Ted, having leapt off a bank-type-thingie (horse-racing term) that was more horse-friendly than it was in bygone days. Alas, Robert refused. Luckily for him he hadn’t a jockey on board, his backside would still be stinging from the whippin’.
Arjen Robben, you can be sure, is still stinging from the lashing he got from Eamon Dunphy last week. “A bit of a headless chicken”, “a bit brain-dead”, “a hypochondriac”, “he’s got issues, shall we say”, he said in a warm tribute to the admittedly hard-to-like Bayern Munich man.
Arjen, though, got off lightly compared to Barcelona, Dunphy dismissing them as “a one-trick pony” after their performance against Inter Milan.
“You can’t win major titles with no defence,” he declared. “Cough,” said Ronnie Whelan.
“ . . . Although they won the Champions League last year,” Dunphy remembered.
It was a great “although”, not just a good one.
