TV View: MARK ROBSON is a decent bloke. We know this for sure.While most skiing chappies would boast of conquering the slopes at trendy spots like Kitzbühel or Cortina d'Ampezzo or Val d'Isère, the silver-tongued Ulsterman with a liking for comparing rugby players with exotic beasts - mostly extinct ones, mind you - let it slip during Leinster's Magners League match with Connacht on Setanta Sports on Friday night he had just returned from a ski trip . . . to Scotland!
It's what you'd expect, to be honest, from a man with a microphone who tends to tell it as it is. Why sip champagne when you can have whisky? Although, given the weather raging in Galway, Robson might have wished his trip to the exotic Highlands had been extended for a day or two longer.
Still, it did come to our attention during Robson's commentary that he has a habit for likening some of the, ahem, bigger rugby goys to wild animals.
Did he really liken Ollie Le Roux to a "hungry hippopotamus"?
Now, if Mark had ever watched one particular episode of Killinaskully he'd know that hippos are responsible for more deaths in the wild in Africa than lions. True.
Anyway, we suspect Le Roux's new moniker - "The Hippo" (go on, we dare you) - has a bit more street cred than the Tyrannosaurus Rex comparison dished out on a certain Munster player the following evening in the meeting with Cardiff Blues at the Arms Park.
In fairness to Mark, Tony Buckley - "all 22 stone of him" - is a big goy who would scare the living daylights out of most members of the human race, never mind poor opposing players charged with stopping him in his tracks.
When in 1842 the scientist Richard Owen coined the word "dinosaur", meaning "fearfully great lizard" - from the Greek "deinos" meaning "fearfully great" and "sauros" meaning "lizard" - little did he know the association would creep into the rugby lexicon . . . we'll wait to see who gets the monikers "Barasaurus" (heavy lizard") and "Velociraptor" (speedy robber).
Anyway, you'd wonder what we did before Setanta Sports hit our screens, because their cameras seem to be everywhere these days.
From schools rugby to colleges hurling, from the English Premiership to the US Tour golf, the station has worked its way into our living-rooms with some aplomb, and in Robson and his sidekick Liam Toland it has unearthed a duo with the knack of moving beyond simple play-by-play and managing to incorporate some analysis into the commentary on the run, so to speak.
On Saturday evening as one heavy hit followed another in the Munster-Cardiff match Robson observed, "It's not a tickling competition . . . and rugby shouldn't be either."
Indeed, this was far from a tickling contest, and you could feel the anxiety coming through from Robson as the match neared its death and Munster, clinging to a narrow lead, proceeded to play out high-risk fare near their own end line.
When Toland suggested Munster might be still tempted in trying to get a fourth try and a bonus point, Robson - who, moments earlier, had remarked that the match was being played "on a postage stamp" - replied, "If I was Munster, I wouldn't be thinking about that bonus point. I'd want the referee to blow the (final) whistle, and get on that plane (home)."
As it transpired, Robson - or should we say "Homalocephale" (level head) - was spot on, and Munster were caught at the death.
Over on Setanta Ireland later, the satellite station got the chance to build further on its growing Gaelic Games portfolio, although there were occasions when it seemed that a few cent should be invested in washcloths to wipe the camera lens of the expensive equipment as we struggled to make out the Dublin and Cavan players in the National League match being televised from Breffni Park.
It was a game that produced 13 yellow cards, but as studio analyst Eugene McGee observed afterwards, the proliferation of cards at this time of the year is a bit like what happens at Christmas.
"It's a load of rubbish," insisted McGee, adding that come July and August (and the championship) referees would be keeping cards in their pockets for tackles no better than the ones now being punished.
It does seem, though, that referees are on a loser, no matter what the code. On BBC's Match of the Day on Saturday night, Mark Lawrenson was so frustrated by the inconsistency of refereeing in the Premiership he volunteered to go to the FA to back up Frank Lampard, who had been harshly sent off in Chelsea's match with West Ham.
"I fear for the game, seriously," said Lawrenson.
