Gol, Gol, Gol, Gol, Gol, Goooooooooolllll.
It's long been the case that we Irish get to smugly watch our über* entertaining major soccer tournament punditry on RTE while taking the odd glance over at the British coverage for comparison.
I myself haven't seen too much of Ian Wright on the beeb, but that was in the interest of my TV's health more than anything having seen him say Steven Gerrard and England were right to dive to win penalties after one of their warm up games preceeding the tournament. It took real restraint not to launch a projectile in his image's direction. The idiocy of this man seemingly knows no bounds.
He seems to be coming in for some serious gruff from the Scots now aswell, although I'm unsure of the root cause. Scroll down here for The Daily Record's sports column titled What a steaming pile of Ian Wright. Apparently doing the rounds on the SMS circuit at the moment is the delightful "Ian Wright has died of a heart attack after celebrating England's 2-0 victory against Trinidad & Tobago. Doctors have described his condition as 'satisfactory'."
I can only applaud this sentiment for its callous perfection.
Anyways, as I was saying, we love our pundits. A special mention must go to Graeme Souness who has surpassed all my expectations. I thought he was being brought in to give some extra raw oomph and grunt to the boiler room of RTE's punditry machine. However, he has greatly impressed me with his silky, sophisticated analysis and his manner in general.
He picked up the cadence and personalities of each of his studio companions with frightening ease and seems now to have been very much accepted into the group by the elder statesmen. At this stage everyone is bouncing off each other on the panel in a most entertaining blur of enthusiastic palaver. Who needs Big Brother? Bravo RTE.
Now, I don't want to sound as if I think the licence fee is value for money in light of previous debates on these hallowed grounds, so lets point out areas for improvement. Punditry, ok, Commentary, more to do. I've no doubt the Latin Americans listen to European commentators with the same quizzical superciliousness that we listen to British punditry.
Can't we send Jimmy Magee and Geroge Hamilton on a training camp to Latin America for 6 weeks previous to the next major tournament?
Published by Paul.
I myself haven't seen too much of Ian Wright on the beeb, but that was in the interest of my TV's health more than anything having seen him say Steven Gerrard and England were right to dive to win penalties after one of their warm up games preceeding the tournament. It took real restraint not to launch a projectile in his image's direction. The idiocy of this man seemingly knows no bounds.
He seems to be coming in for some serious gruff from the Scots now aswell, although I'm unsure of the root cause. Scroll down here for The Daily Record's sports column titled What a steaming pile of Ian Wright. Apparently doing the rounds on the SMS circuit at the moment is the delightful "Ian Wright has died of a heart attack after celebrating England's 2-0 victory against Trinidad & Tobago. Doctors have described his condition as 'satisfactory'."
I can only applaud this sentiment for its callous perfection.
Anyways, as I was saying, we love our pundits. A special mention must go to Graeme Souness who has surpassed all my expectations. I thought he was being brought in to give some extra raw oomph and grunt to the boiler room of RTE's punditry machine. However, he has greatly impressed me with his silky, sophisticated analysis and his manner in general.
He picked up the cadence and personalities of each of his studio companions with frightening ease and seems now to have been very much accepted into the group by the elder statesmen. At this stage everyone is bouncing off each other on the panel in a most entertaining blur of enthusiastic palaver. Who needs Big Brother? Bravo RTE.
Now, I don't want to sound as if I think the licence fee is value for money in light of previous debates on these hallowed grounds, so lets point out areas for improvement. Punditry, ok, Commentary, more to do. I've no doubt the Latin Americans listen to European commentators with the same quizzical superciliousness that we listen to British punditry.
Can't we send Jimmy Magee and Geroge Hamilton on a training camp to Latin America for 6 weeks previous to the next major tournament?
I'm really having trouble deciding on a favourite out of these three. What do you reckon?
* I'm just getting in the form for In Fact, Ah plus friends' trip to GERMANY for the World Cup on July 1st with the odd umlaut sprinkled here and there on the blog. There will be Partying, Beer and Football. Oh Yes.
tags:world cup
Published by Paul.
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