BBC features Great Britain on Ireland’s final day of football

IN PUBS and living rooms across England on Sunday afternoon, a whole new nation was recruited as summertime experts in one of Ireland’s national sports.

As Sunday roasts were handed out and pints dined, shouts of ‘You wouldn’t see an entrance like that at Old Trafford’, ‘Tadhg Morely would rip Harry Kane in half’ and ‘James McCarthy, he’s one of us’ rang out. . it filled the lazy afternoon air from Southampton to Newcastle.

The BBC did all they could yesterday to make Ireland’s final day of football a prominent fixture in their sporting calendar beyond the north. They tackled the challenge with enthusiasm and seemed to pull it off.

“It’s bigger than Eurovision,” said a Dublin fan interviewed before the All-Ireland game on the final day. “This is the Irish Superbowl,” said new Late Late Show host Patrick Kielty from the top of the Croke Park stands.

In the studio, Sarah Mulkerrins introduced Mickey Harte, Michael Murphy and Oisín McConville to England, while familiar faces from Kielty, Dara Ó Briain, Paul Mescal and Adrian Dunbar were recruited to acclimate the new Headquarters audience.

With all the pageantry the BBC had thrown up, it was hard to keep an eye on The Sunday Game. Joanne Cantwell showed off her usual solid personality, while Peter Canavan single-handedly tried to brighten the day with bright lights in his shimmering suit. While Canavan looked like a best man looking for a groom, Ciarán Whelan and Tomás Ó Sé were much more conservatively dressed, matching the general tone of the national broadcaster.

The novelty factor took the BBC’s coverage far and there’s nothing stopping them from replicating that presentation year after year for a British audience. Those in Ireland who choose to watch the final on Beeb will probably be looking for that angle once a year as well.

Oisín McConville did an admirable job of introducing the overseas audience to the importance of All-Ireland on the final day, Kielty giving a 101 on how ‘you can only play for the town you were born in, you can only play for the county you’re in’ re from”, David Clifford was compared to Lionel Messi, amateur status praised and Michael Murphy wowed Blighty with his Tír Chonaill cadence.

Aside from the Canavan suit, RTÉ was so chill. There was some slight disagreement over whether Paul Geaney double rebounded the ball before scoring Kerry’s goal, but many viewers must have been wishing a Pat Spillane character would throw a pair of hand grenades. Full-time, Tomás Ó Sé surmised: “No discussion topics after that, congratulations on Dublin.” “Hats off,” Canavan agreed.

The BBC was able to build a show in a way that RTÉ couldn’t, and they ran with it. If you were an Irishman watching their coverage, all this delight in our national identity would be enough to give you a nosebleed. You were nervous that one of the guys was going to let us down by picking his nose and wiping it on the back of his seat live.

And somewhere in deeper London, in Angie’s pub in Cricklewood or even in The Marquis of Granby in New Cross, you knew there was an old man from Cahersiveen, watching Dara Ó Briain lyrical about the game and muttering in his pint of simple: “Sure, what would an asshole from Wicklow know about football?

If you want to criticize the BBC, and we can’t let them get away without at least a little hint, it was that apart from Philly McMahon in the co-comment, they didn’t have anyone on the air who had a dog in the fight. They had a woman from Galway and men from Armagh, Donegal and Tyrone in the studio and a native of Kildare, a man from Fermanagh, a man from Down and that know-it-all mathematician from Wicklow in Croke Park, limiting the range to a row suitable to the spillane and brolly

Perhaps if the Dubs and Kerry return to the decider next year, the BBC can bring Conor McGregor and Michael Healy-Rae into the studio. Add Stephen Nolan as an adjudicator and Beeb has truly struck gold.