Any of you mathematicians out there fancy decoding this little baby? (Deep breath): 0000011003210002002054031002651206140004.

I’m willing to bet that even those green army veterans of Paris for whom Thierry Henry will always come complete with horns and cloven feet, can’t help finding themselves seduced by the Frenchman’s multi-walk-on role in the latest Sky Sports commercial.

Back in 1990, when I’d just started out on the full-time football-writing beat, I happened to find myself in the old FAI headquarters on Merrion Square one evening in the company of various officials, guests and media folk.

Is there a handy Grexit-style word out there to sum up Irish football’s departure from Europe this week?

Short of Paul McGrath doing a Bejamin Button and reconstituting himself as the fabled ‘Black Pearl of Inchichore’, it’s hard to think of an Irish footballer whose appearance in the League of Ireland will generate more genuine delight than that of Damien Duff.

Pope Francis is, or rather was, well known as a football man and, in particular, as a committed supporter of the San Lorenzo club in his native Argentina, so it rather came as a shock when he recently confessed that he had never seen his fellow countryman Lionel Messi in action.

Martin O’Neill said earlier this week that defeat against Scotland today would leave Ireland with a mountain to climb in European Championship Group D.

And so the ‘Hand Of Gaul’ turned into the ‘Hand-Out Of Gaul’.

He was ‘Pally’ by name but, where Roy Keane was concerned, not always pally by nature.

Tottenham legend Steve Perryman led his club to two victories in the FA Cup in the 1980s. For him Wembley, and the FA Cup itself, retains all of the fabled romance and lustre.