Tbilisi TV hits spot RTÉ fails to reach
But no joy, all I got from repeatedly clicking the remote control was a procession of programmes in languages I didn’t understand featuring people I didn’t know talking about subjects of which I was entirely ignorant when, with absolutely no warning, no parental advisory notice, no ‘pay per view’ request and no careful pixelation or techno fig leaf of any kind, my screen was suddenly alive with a trio of naked people, two men and a woman, most vigorously engaged in — how shall I put this? — proving that two into one can go.
Well, lookit missus, I’m still not the better of the shock, and it was only through my renowned spiritual self-control that, in virtually no time at all, I managed to stave off terminal corruption by hitting the remote again and promptly alighting on a religious channel in which some class of holy man with a long beard appeared to be holding an audience of wide-eyed devotees spell-bound with what I can only assume were words of a deeply philosophical nature.
That two such wildly different stations — the one devoted to matters spiritual, the other, well, not — could exist cheek by jowl on terrestrial television in Tbilisi struck me as one of the more exotic, not to say bizarre, aspects of our brief exposure to life in Georgia.
From ‘wham bam’ to ‘thank you, Imam’, as it were, with just the press of a button.
Still, it’s easy enough, as a stranger in a strange land, to find strangeness without even going looking for it. And the same would surely apply, I suspect, to Georgian football fans if they were suddenly exposed to our own country’s favourite form of hardcore entertainment on the box.
I refer, of course, to the RTÉ football panel who, once again, managed to generate almost as many headlines as the match itself following Ireland’s 2-1 win in Tbilisi. I’ve been catching up with it all since I got back from Georgia and, frankly, am still at a loss to see precisely what the fuss is supposed to be about.
At the heart of it was Tony O’Donoghue’s post-match interview, in which O’Neill briefly took the RTÉ man to task for a perceived lack of enthusiasm for Ireland’s win. I’ve watched it back a couple of times now and still detect more tongue in cheek than fist in glove in O’Neill’s remarks. And O’Donoghue seemed to see it that way too, quipping about the manager misreading his body language — a clever reference to a pre-match line of O’Neill’s — in the course of an interesting interview which ended on a light, upbeat note.
Like many managers, O’Neill might not take too kindly to hard questions in the immediate wake of a game but the exchange, though lively, was hardly explosive. Yet, back in the studio, Dunphy managed to ratchet up the temperature with a denunciation of the manager’s attitude, as if O’Neill had borrowed Fergie’s hairdryer and set it to stun.
In the way of these things, this produced a snowball effect, with John Giles joining in and a throwaway comment by Roy Keane earlier in the week being referenced by the prosecution as another example of the Irish management’s alleged belligerence and paranoia. (In fact, having been party to that media briefing in Malahide, I can safely say that I was not alone in coming away with the feeling that Keane had been in a particularly mischievous mood that day).
A media story given legs by the media, Dunphy next turned up on radio to tell O’Neill that he should “grow up”, ‘Gift Grub’ then got in on the act in inimitable style and, still fanning the paltry flame, one paper reported that the manager and O’ Donoghue had subsequently “buried the hatchet”. At least that’s what the headline said — the actual quote from Tony simply revealed that he’d spoken again to O’Neill before leaving Tbilisi and that there’d been “no problem”.
Which was about as close to the mundane truth as you could get. I don’t deny that O’Neill can seem a bit prickly on occasion while no one will ever make the mistake of suggesting Keano is all sweetness and light but, right now, this is a management-media war that’s about as phony as it gets. Which isn’t to say that things mightn’t get stickier along the qualification trail, of course. The RTÉ panel were right to point out that Ireland laboured to victory in Tbilisi — and given how deep Georgia defended in the second half, the absence of Wes Hoolahan was especially keenly felt — but the magic of Aiden McGeady’s winning goal was at least one thing on which everyone, from management to media to Montrose, were happy to agree.
At that press briefing earlier in the week, Keane had joked about being pleased that the foreplay was finally over before expressing the hope that the game against Georgia wouldn’t end in “anti-climax”.
McGeady, thankfully, ensured that precisely the opposite was the case. At which point, I’ll resist the very strong temptation to refer you back to the opening paragraphs and, instead, leave you this week with the experience of colleague Paul O’Hehir in a shop in Tbilisi.
Upon learning that his customer was Irish, the shopkeeper paused thoughtfully for a bit before offering this considered response: “Potatoes and The Cranberries — yes, that is Ireland.”
