Why test when there are processes you can’t detect?

True confession: your columnist had forgotten all about Ireland playing Germany until I stumbled across the post-match analysis on Friday night’s television.

Leaving aside the usual puzzling contradiction whereby the team – you know, the actual players on the field — were absolved by the TV pundits of responsibility for a dreadful performance, it was obviously a low point. Maybe even the lowest ever for Irish soccer.

But it wasn’t the lowest point of last week. That came a couple of days earlier, when Lance Armstrong’s reputation went into the sausage-grinder of a 1,000-page report by the US Anti-Doping Agency and came out the other end as a rancid saveloy.