TV VIEW:IT'S NEVER good to be in transit and not sitting in front of your telly when Munster are in action. "RoooOOOOOoonan O'GAAAAARRRAAAAA," said Michael Corcoran, almost causing a pile-up on the M50. Although, most of the startled drivers who had just turned on their radios were probably thinking: "God Corky, move on – that drop goal's a week old."
So then, the weekend's most sparkling sporty moment was missed, a complete calamity at the end of a spell when we had to endure wall-to-wall Sepp Blatter coverage, the Fifa supremo appearing on our screens almost as often as that WiMax ad. Newsnight, Channel 4 Newsand 24-hour rolling coverage on Sky Sepp News. And that was only the half of it.
CNN’s sports coverage isn’t always, to be honest about it, the most exhilarating. It might be just that we’re watching reruns, but last week we could have sworn we saw their ticker breaking news thingie tell us that Ronnie Delany had just struck gold in Melbourne.
But Pedro Pinto’s chat with the Blatter man was highly current and having watched it you ... well, you sensed no one would blink because of the fella’s witless track record of offending just about everyone who isn’t a heterosexual male with pearly white skin.
“Do you think there is racism on the pitch?” Pedro asked.
If only we’d put a fiver on our forecast that “I would deny it, there is no racism!” would be his response.
“I would deny it, there is no racism,” he said. Flip.
You know that mutt in the ‘Ultimate Dog Tease’ YouTube video? Remember how anguished he was when his master told him he’d given his leftover chicken-covered-with-cheese to the cat? A kind of a ‘you cannot be serious?’ moment. Well, that’s how hurt Sepp looked by Pedro’s mere suggestion of racism still existing on the football pitch.
In fact, he’d hardly have looked more shocked than if he’d heard Qatar hadn’t won the 2018 World Cup hosting bid.
There was, as more than a few have pointed out, a Comical Ali feel to it all. “There is no racism!” – the words used as a soundtrack for replays all week of the moment England captain – captain, mark you – John Terry mouthed “black ****” in Anton Ferdinand’s direction.
Terry and his Chelsea lawyers have, of course, informed us that he was actually saying something along the lines of: “I never called you a black ****”, and you, needless to say, have to believe them.
(Sky News continue to blur Terry’s mouth when they replay the moment, the other channels let us see him in all his glory. Curious.) But the football world was outraged by Sepp’s remarks, none more so than Gordon Taylor, the head of the English PFA, who popped up on our screens last week more times than, well, that WiMax ad.
“I couldn’t believe it when I heard them,” he said of Blatter’s comments on Sky Sports News.
“I just felt this was a bridge too far, the straw that broke the camel’s back – he made offensive comments some time ago about female footballers and then more recently he was very homophobic in Qatar.”
Taylor was particularly upset by Blatter’s view that ‘heat of the moment’ racist comments were no big deal, and could be sorted out with a handshake at full-time.
As The Observerreminded us yesterday – 1994: "Taylor says Stuart Pearce's alleged racist abuse of Paul Ince was 'in the heat of the moment . . . Stuart regrets what he said, and he'll be ringing Paul to apologise. Hopefully that will be the end of it.'"
Granted, 17 years is a monumentally long time in football, cripes Ray Houghton was inserting the ball in the Italian net back then, but still, some curious champions of anti-bigotry emerged last week. Like The Daily Mail, as Sky News' Paper Previewshared with us.
“There are worse things to complain about (than racism) . . . so, Mr Evra and Mr Ferdinand, I know you feel insulted. But perhaps in this case you could just put up with it and get on with the game,” wrote one of their columnists last month.
The Daily Maillast week? "GO NOW, BLATTER."
You know, we can say one thing for our Sepp – at least he’s consistent in being offensive and clueless.
Come the end of the week the BBC had a scoop, a chat with a repentant Sepp.
The gist: ‘Sorry if I offended you, but . . .’
“I am still hurting because I couldn’t envisage such a reaction,” he said, a bit bewitched, bothered and bewildered by the whole business, astounded by suggestions that there is still racism in football. Like Comical Ali looking over his shoulder, just after declaring “there is no presence of the American columns in the city of Baghdad”, and seeing the Yanks waving their Star-Spangled Banners in his face.
