TV View: TG4 crew rise to marathon challenge as American Football carnival rolls into town

At least ESPN’s American viewers were left in no doubt about Kerry’s location on the map of Ireland, the channel producing a snazzy graphic with a large arrow pointing at David Shanahan’s home county.
Their geographical knowledge proved to be somewhat superior to that of the NBC folk who promoted their coverage of Aston Villa v Arsenal on Saturday by describing Villa as Arsenal’s “cross-town rivals” – like Birmingham was merely a wee corner of London, rather than Britain’s second city. Brummies would have been as offended as David might have been if ESPN’s arrow pointed at, say, Stillorgan.
So then, Georgia Tech v Florida State in Dublin, sort of like a Sigerson Cup match being staged in Tallahassee, which could happen soon enough, the way sport is going.
But hats off to the TG4 crew, headed by presenters Máire Treasa Ní Dhubhghaill and Cuán Ó Flatharta and featuring a string of analysts and guests, for the shift they put in. Coverage started at 4.40 and ended at 8.42, with the match only taking up 60 of those minutes. There was, then, a mountain of talking to be done.
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This, of course, is partly why some of us don’t have American Football high on our list of must-see sport, the stoppy-starty, interminable nature of it making it a bit of an endurance test. It only took Jakob Ingebrigtsen, for example, 7:17.55 to have us falling off our couches in awe on Sunday afternoon when he left the 3,000m world record in smithereens at the Diamond League meeting in Poland.
“Do not adjust your sets,” our Virgin Media commentator Tim Hutchings advised us. “Ingebrigtsen doesn’t just rip world records up, he liquidises them.” He does too. Even Ingebrigtsen looked gobsmacked when he laid eyes on the clock, never mind ourselves.
It took the football a little longer to warm up, after 7:17.55 the only action of note that we’d seen was the Georgia Tech outside linebacker scratching his nose. But, in truth, the main reason for tuning in was to see if the American commentary team would say nice things about us. They didn’t let us down, they were very kind, generally describing us as lovely people and Dublin a wonderland, breaking away during the 1,204 timeouts to show us the sights.
“That’s an Irish tin whistle on the streets of Dublin,” said Joe Tessitore as we were shown a random woman sitting outside a shop playing a tune. There’s a chance now that ESPN’s viewers think that this is how all Irish women pass their time, but sure look it, we could be doing worse.
Initially it was a little disconcerting to see what the visitors had done to our pitch, with all their lines and numbers and squiggles, although Heimir Hallgrimsson must be tempted to ask the FAI to keep it that way for the visit of England next month. Bukayo Saka and Phil Foden are both skilled at getting to the endline and pulling the ball back for Harry Kane, but if they don’t know which line is the endline, that makes it tricky. It’s worth thinking about.
By the commentary team’s estimation, between 25,000 and 30,000 had travelled from Georgia and Florida for the game, roughly the size of the two team’s squads. All you could do was pity the English hen parties who’d booked flights for the same weekend, only to discover they’d have to remortgage their homes to cover the cost of a hotel room.
But for those in the Aviva Stadium and watching from home, there was a thriller of an ending to the game, a fella by the name of Aidan Birr knocking a field goal over with five seconds left on the clock to win the game for Georgia Tech – when those who know about these things reckoned there was as much chance of Georgia Tech winning as there is of Erik Ten Hag still being employed by Christmas.
Back at the athletics. And Armand Duplantis only went and broke his own pole vault world record.
“There is so much more to come from him,” said Hutchings.
At this rate, they’ll have to raise the sky.