Talking disaster area

And so, Ireland’s World Cup odyssey (sic) gets off to a non-disastrous start. (Unless, of course, they’ve been ripped apart by Germany in a game played after my deadline, in which case disregard every other word on this page).

Foul Play actually felt less tense during the Cameroon game than he normally does, though this can be ascribed to the fact that he could barely keep his eyelids propped open for the first 15 minutes. It goes without saying that 7.30am is a dreadful time of the morning to be watching a football match, much less slugging your way through bottle after bottle after bottle of beer.

The rest of you plebs may have gotten your rocks off primarily through Matt Holland’s goal, but for this viewer, the peak of the entire experience was the sight of Eamon Dunphy being forced into an hilarious display of backtracking after the match.

“We shouldn’t be dancing in the streets over a draw with Cameroon,” he sneered. Really? Then why had he spent the previous week telling the nation that the Africans were a superb side full of good players, and that, without Roy Keane, Ireland shouldn’t deign to bother turning up?

And moreover, was I noticing things, or was John Giles (peerless as ever) trying to slowly edge his studio chair away from Dunphy’s?

Foul Play enjoys watching the guy spontaneously combust as much as anyone, and it goes without saying that he remains one of the most watchable television personalities in a country not overflowing with them.

But his craw-thumping indignation over the Roy Keane fiasco seemed a bit forced, not to say unsustainable, as did his point-blank refusal to give McCarthy one ounce of credit for a second half of superb football against Cameroon.

More mystifying still is the unwillingness of everyone – from John Bowman on Questions & Answers to Mark Lawrenson on The Last Word – to mention the not irrelevant detail that Dunphy is, of course, ghostwriting Keane’s autobiography, and therefore has the mother of all vested interests in this.

Only Ray Stubbs on Football Focus dared to call him on it, bringing the conversation to a swift and brutal end when the subject of the book came up.

As regards Ireland, it seems that the obvious way to get three points from this wretched Saudi Arabian side is to temporarily revert to type and adopt the dinosaur tactics of lumping it up to Niall Quinn.

The Jerries themselves scored with five headers against the Saudis in Sapporo, which must be some kind of record. Even Carsten Jancker, who failed to trouble the statisticians even once in last season’s Bundesliga, helped himself to a goal. The mind boggles at what a genuinely class forward, like Vieri or Trezeguet, would do to that defence.

If Germany, who are stolid but unexceptional, can knock in eight, then Ireland can surely manage three, at the very least. As it is, the extent of the Germans’ goal spree effectively acts as an extra half-point in their favour if things get tight in Group E.

It would be sick indeed if the destiny of the group came down to how many goals each side could put past this Saudi outfit, who look like the worst team to participate in a World Cup since the El Salvadorean shower who leaked ten goals to Hungary in ‘82. But it won’t come to that. We hope.

Otherwise, so far, so good. The games have ranged from absorbing to compelling, and there has been the merest smattering of yellow cards, as if the referees have secured a promise from the players that they won’t behave like wild fucking animals, in return for a pledge that they themselves will refrain from acting like coked-up traffic wardens.

The only fault I can find with the fare served up so far is that when you are watching games played at such ungodly hours, when the final one ends around 2.20pm you’re left twiddling your thumbs for the rest of the day.

Even the quality of the TV images from the Far East are top drawer, in contrast to the Mexico ‘86-like hazy visions that I had been expecting after viewing the fuzzy reception of the South Korea v England pre-tournament friendly.

“Why wouldn’t the pictures be clear as a bell?” a friend said the other day when I mentioned this to her. “The Orientals are always great at that sort of thing.”

I love having my racial stereotypes effortlessly confirmed, don’t you?

FOGRA: If you’ll permit me to indulge in a shameless act of name-dropping, I received an e-mail on Friday evening from the great comedy writer Arthur Mathews, the man who gave the world Father Ted, Well-Remembered Days, Big Train and much, much more besides.

It seems that our national broadcaster’s coverage of the World Cup has left Arthur in unforgiving mood. “After ONE GAME,” he wrote, “RTE managed to get France’s World Cup group in the wrong order. Enjoy the tournament. A.”

But Arthur, it wouldn’t be a proper World Cup without RTE printing scorelines the wrong way around, neglecting to tell us about other ones, displaying the group placings in the wrong sequence, and generally fucking with our minds.

They still have some way to go to recreate the glory days of Euro 96, when they would routinely caption David Seaman as “Alan Seaman”. But we should give them time. It’s only the first round, after all.