Filth and fury as pundits find it all a bit too much

THE omens were bad from the start when pictures showed Dessie Dolan bent over in pain from a blow to the privates during the warm-up.

Okay, it was only the football friendly-fire, if you like but still.

Before too long, they were falling like flies. "This is not sport, it's open warfare," said Marty Morrissey, "the most appalling scenes I have ever seen on a football field."

His co-commentator Kevin McStay wearing a neat Irish Army sports jacket, surely another harbinger of imminent bloodletting reckoned "it's nearly impossible for a commentator to stay with all the crack going on off the ball."

Morrissey and McStay gave it holly from early on. "Thuggery that could have been a jawbreaker," was McStay's verdict on the tackle on Philip Jordan that robbed the game of one of its more notorious sons, Chris Johnson.

"Look at him (Johnson)," added McStay, as Johnson punched his way through a knot of Irish players in the seconds after his crunching tackle, "going around looking for work."

McStay, at least, is no johnny-come-lately in the Department of Dirt Condemnation. Anthony Tohill, on the other hand, put down a summer of equivocation "a man's game" one Sunday, "what happens on the field stays on the field," another.

Yesterday, he got into his long, loping stride. Clearly, he finds it easier to nail Aussies than some who operate, er, closer to home.

"He has swung for all he is worth. That guy shouldn't be allowed to play for Australia again. It is paramount (sic) to assault," he said of Johnson.

"Tempestuous, untidy and not football in my humble opinion," claimed Marty.

"The only place Ryan O'Keeffe hasn't been to hit someone is the presentation stand," said McStay, who noted that it was O'Keeffe who flattened Irish referee Michael Collins in (we presume) an accidental collision.

In a moment reminiscent of the Tommy Gorman/Roy Keane interview, Morrissey wondered about the kids at home. A few hours free from the books, gathered in front of televisions, the poor loves, in schoolrooms all over Ireland had turned to horror.

Methinks they might just recover. I mean, it was bad, but it wasn't Columbine High either, was it?

"An element of thuggery creeping into it," said Tadhg Kennelly, who accused Australia of showing a "lack of respect" to Ireland.

The scenes were "just not right for the future of the series," he said. He was so annoyed he refused to repeat his Fr Neil Horan exhibition of Irish dancing in the studio.

Beforehand, Kennelly was inclined to say that Ireland should go at the Aussies more physically than last week, but the early passages had him urging a "refocus on the football."

Tohill and himself took to studying the type of player Peter McGrath had selected and bemoaned the absence of ball-winners up front. "There is no aerial threat," said Tohill.

Alas for put-upon McGrath, the Aussie cameramen "front it up" like their players. They were in his face all the time, catching his every grimace and sigh. A lesser man would have taken out the cameraman out with a Chris Johnson special.

There was no respite for McGrath. Marty praised him for his "bravery" in taking Michael McVeigh out of goal for the last quarter but the good was even taken out of that by Tohill who rightly pointed out afterwards that this switch should have been made long before.

The drudgery weighed on McGrath when he was interviewed by Marty afterwards. Players had been put "at serious risk, in a team game that's not acceptable", he said as, as if by arrangement, an injured Irish player limped past in the background.

The sense of wounded national pride was immense. Wonders of broadband, we checked out Radio 3AW in Melbourne, purveyors of live commentary sponsored by Noodles Restaurant.

We expected "Mary McAleese, can you hear me? Mary McAleese, your boys took a hell of a beating."

We got quite the opposite. The commentators were sickened by the display of their own boys too. "A spiteful game," they said, and slammed "Australia's physicality."

It was glum to the end. "Troy Makepeace," muttered Kevin McStay when the Kangaroos man got the ball, "a good name for the night that's in it."

Bet there wasn't much crack in Noodles afterwards.