Analysis Analysed

Two and a half weeks in, and it’s been a cracker of a World Cup. Not only has the football been excellent, but (at least as important from the point of view of an armchair fan like myself) televisual entertainment of the highest order has been on offer.

Adrian Chiles of the BBC continues to delight, some of his best moments coming after last night’s bad-tempered Portugal – Netherlands game. Introducing a selection of clips of the incidents leading to the evening’s many cards, he had the rare honesty to say “let’s not be too sanctimonious about this. After all, it was great entertainment???. The clips were captioned “Handbags???, with that word also displayed in Portuguese and Dutch. I suspect that was Chiles’ idea. A few moments later, he was enthusing about a clip of one of the Portuguese walking off the pitch attended by a physio, who stooped to shove his hand up the player’s shorts and rub an ice pack around his inner thigh. “God, I wish someone would do that for me???, he said, “Anyone, man woman or beast???. And he just wouldn’t let it go, turning to Martin O’Neill: “Martin, when you were playing, was anyone ever kind enough to rub ice into your inner thigh???? O’Neill, an intelligent man, chose to deadpan it, with a simple “Yes???. They should get Chiles to cover the next royal wedding, or better still, funeral.

Meanwhile, RTE continue to have all the strengths and weakness I identified last week. The A panel is as brilliant as always, but what has really impressed has been the strength of the B team. Kenny Cunningham has done well, bringing a player’s insight to the table and Denis Irwin has been solid, if a little boring. The off-camera Scottish contingent of Trevor Steven and Ray Houghton have done well too, but the revelation of the tournament has been that other Scot, Graeme Souness. Though I’ve never much liked him (his tenure at Rangers was a little too bellicose for my taste, and what he did to Liverpool will never be forgiven), he’s a natural for the particular type of analysis RTE offer. After a few games, he seems to have figured out that he’s not on Sky, and doesn’t have to gush about how fabulous everything is. Once he figured this out, he flourished, bringing his own distinctive brand of crankiness to the complement the crankiness offered by the rest of the panel. So successful has he been that RTE have hoisted him straight into the A team with Chippy, Gilesy and Eamo. The kicking the four of them keep giving to England is a bit gratuitous, but it’s tremendous fun, and provides a balance to what’s available on BBC and (shudder) ITV. Dunphy suggested yesterday that he’d like to see England go all the way to the final, just to extend the pleasure of ridiculing their hapless manager.

Après Match is as funny as ever, Barry Murphy’s German character Lothar being a wonderfully strange creation, but his Liaison Officer for the Integration of Foreign Games into Gaelic Zones, funny the first time, is getting a bit tedious. Also, I’m not sure that constant re-use of this character isn’t a misjudgement, the majority of sports fans not sharing the anti-GAA bias of hardcore soccer men like Murphy.

The weakest part of RTE’s game is undoubtedly the “Gatecrasher??? feature, where someone called Ger Gilroy travels around all the host cities of Germany in a camper van. The best thing about this segment is it opening animation, in which a battered Italia ’90 era camper arrives at the Brandenburg Gate and covers the Qualifying Nations Car Park with rubber from handbrake turns, “Put ‘em Under Pressure??? blaring from it’s stereo. It’s all downhill from there I’m afraid. Despite the edginess suggested by the title and opening sequence, Gilroy is not exactly dangerous. In fact he’s a thoroughly nice fellow, great company I’m sure over a pint in Kiely’s after a Leinster rugby match. If he and his (on-camera but disturbingly silent) mate are having a nice trip around Germany, good luck to them, but if they have persuaded RTE to pay them for the privilege, I’d expect something in the way of insight. In fact, Après Match have already taken the piss out of the segment, asking the valid question, “Who cares???? I had hoped that things would improve as Gilroy got a feeling for the country and for the mood of the tournament, but he seems incapable of getting a feel for anything. This tin ear was well illustrated last week before an England match. Coming across a man and two young boys on their way to the game, Northern Ireland flags draped around their shoulders, Ger decided to engage them in conversation. Unfortunately he did so by asking them what part of, er, the North they came from. Now if I wanted to get some rapport going with a family of people wrapped in this particular flag and going to this particular game, I’d avoid the geo-political designation “the North???. You could sense from his pause that Ger knew he was putting his foot in it, but he was either unable or unwilling to save himself with the more palatable “Northern Ireland??? or even “Ulster???. A simple “where are you from lads???? would probably have sufficed. In the event, the father told him that they were from “Belfast. (meaningful pause) East Belfast??? and answered a few questions politely but tersely, all the time striding ahead of Gilroy as fast as he could. Now maybe this man was of the type who take their Unionism very seriously, and don’t have much to say to RTE under any circumstances, but my own impression of this little snippet was an opportunity wasted through Gilroy’s clumsiness. Adrian Chiles wouldn’t have made that mistake. Or if he did, he would have done it on purpose.