Rugger buggers such a turn-off for fans of the oval ball

It’s getting harder and harder to watch rugby on RTE – because if it’s not Ryle Nugent rattling on in that hybrid mid-Atlantic/Dublin southside accent, it’s a splattering Hooky determined to find fault with anything and everything in his sight.

The panel – not unlike their soccer counterparts – are in danger of becoming caricatures of themselves as they do everything in their power to make half-time seem more important than the match.

And that’s why you’re better off with the BBC – from the dulcet tones of Eddie Butler, who shows balance even when his beloved Wales are before his eyes; to the wise old heads like Woody and Guscott up in the Gods for analysis, it’s a less frenetic, show-pony sort of effort than the rugger buggers back in RTE.

The problem appears to be for RTE that they once, for a little while, hit the spot on soccer; when Dunphy and Giles and even Chippy Brady told it like they saw it, without fear nor favour from any side.

For a while that set the bar for the rest – at least until Dunphy and Giles started to believe their own publicity and then ended up like two pantomime dames or show-ponies instead of panellists.

Even now with all their overflowing hyperbole and histrionics, they offer something that Sky and the BBC don’t – in simple language, you’d probably call it an opinion.

And Bill O’Herlihy mastered the art of the clueless gnome – a phenomenal achievement in itself, given that he actually did know what he was asking about, but preferred to leave the limelight to the former players.

But Tom McGurk has no interest in hiding his light – or any other part of himself, for that matter – under a bushel; he comes from the broadcasting school of ‘I know more than you’, trying to sound more knowledgeable than his panel by shouting them down.

And when you load that onto the traditional testosterone of the rugby clubhouse, you have quite a heady mix – indeed one that is too much for mere mortals who only want to watch a rugby match.

An exchange between McGurk and Hook after England saw us off a week ago was typical – in fairness to Hook, he could do little about it because the presenter was goading him like a school bully by alternatively suggesting he wasn’t upset or he was over emotional after Ireland’s defeat.

For more, read this week's Connacht Sentinel.