RTÉ pulls out all the stops to mark St Brian’s Day

Good news.

Just when you thought RTÉ was spending the last of your money on stuff like Marty Morrissey’s make-up or damages for the Iona Institute or documentaries on Charlie Bird’s latest pointless trip to the ends of the earth (complete with return ticket, unfortunately), the national broadcaster pulls out all the stops and gives Saturday at the Aviva.

It’s like a royal wedding, state funeral and triumphal procession rolled into one. It’s as if St Patrick’s Day has come a week early and been renamed St Brian’s Day in honour of the other national saint. Rumour has it there may even be a rugby match thrown in there too. We’ll have to wait and see.

Admittedly, some elements of the coverage are achingly predictable. Will there be clips of the hat-trick in Paris? There will. Will there be shots of Amy and Sadie in the stand? There will. Will our hero be named man of the match whatever happens on the field? He will.

Still, there’s more to it than might have been expected. RTÉ begins with a neat pastiche of the film The Princess Bride, featuring Eamon Morrissey as the grandfather/Columbo and some young lad as the kid from the Wonder Years.

Sadly Inigo Montoya is an absentee, doubtless either too busy looking for the man who killed his father or else having a few pre-match sharpeners in Kiely’s.

Then it’s over to Shane Horgan, a self-confessed fan as well as friend and former team-mate, interviewing O’Driscoll. He coaxes some nice, self-deprecating lines from the great man. Such as: “I had to grow up quickly. Publicly I probably made some mistakes that in normal circumstances you’d hope to get away with without too many people seeing or knowing.”

And: “I’m Brian O’Driscoll, not David Beckham. Let’s be realistic here.”

Even the panel, normally so self-consciously clear-eyed, have fallen under his spell.

“I came in not wanting to talk about him because we’ve talked about him too much,” Conor O’Shea admits. “Ah hell, we have a once-in-a-lifetime player. We must talk about him!”

Yet behind every great man, etc, and George Hook, whose middle name is Chivalry, wants to make sure the nation realises it, taking it upon himself to mark International Women’s Day by praising a female known to him as “Mrs O’Driscoll” and emphasising her influence on her spouse.

A few words, if you really insist, about the match. But only a few. With Sergio Parisse being rested, Italy are running a non-trier. George is outraged; this is, he snorts, the “first time in the history of this great championship a coach has actually conceded a match before it went ahead”.

Alternatively you could say they’re doing the decent thing by not intruding on St Brian’s Day and at half-time it’s patently obvious that the only issue is Ireland’s margin of victory.

The early stages of the second half are enlivened by a brief scuffle involving Paul O’Connell, Cian Healy and a couple of Italians. To describe it as ‘handbags’ would be to grossly libel Monsieur Hermes of Paris, Signor Prada of Milan et al. What a bunch of wusses. Neil Francis must be mortified.

The man of the moment completes his on-field contribution on the hour by flinging a gorgeous one-handed pass over the top of the Italian cover for Jonathan Sexton to run in.

“Oh my God, what a try from Ireland!” Hugh Cahill, substituting for Ryle Nugent in the commentary box, says it in a manly tone but you just know the earth has moved for him.

Afterwards Miss O’Driscoll makes an on-field cameo appearance in the arms of her daddy. Then off he goes into the Celtic twilight, or possibly to catch a plane for Paris next weekend. A once in a lifetime player.

We’ll be talking about him forever and a day.