Brought Down In The Box

Of all the monstrous blunders perpetrated by RTÉ management during the past decade - axing Scrap Saturday and Nighthawks, commissioning that second series of Bull Island, commissioning that first series of Extra! Extra!, giving Brendan O'Connor the time of day - there can be few gaffes to rank with their ceding of the Champions League broadcasting rights to TV3.

No-one expected instant miracles when TV3 got their hands on the rights, even those of us who flinched when confronted with their grisly opening-night production of Sparta Prague v Arsenal back in September. But I, and the rest of the viewing public, have given them long enough to come up with the goods on this one.

Now, after ten separate rounds of matches and something like double that amount of live broadcasts, it can be stated, without fear or favour, that TV3 haven't got the faintest idea of how to cover the UEFA Champions League.

The presentation is worse, the commentary is worse, the half-time and post-match punditry is far worse… Christ almighty, even the picture quality is worse (though the blame for that, in fairness, rests not with TV3, but with the incompetent jobsworths who tore apart my back garden some weeks ago in order to lay down cable piping).

Of course, it was obvious from the start that TV3 were always going to be on something of a hiding to nothing, in attempting to follow RTÉ's lead. Much of RTÉ Sport's output of late has been patchy at best (I wasn't mad about the Sydney Olympics stuff, and a lot of the recent rugby programmes have been swathed in an air of all-lads-together, self-congratulatory bonhomie), but their football coverage, from The Soccer Show to

The Premiership, is good enough to beat the pants off anything you'll see on the other side

of the pond.

Their Champions League coverage, honed over eight seasons, consisted of four crucial components: O'Herlihy, the classic safe pair of hands, a ringmaster of winningly avuncular charm (which is a hard trick to pull off at the best of times); Giles, simply the best football analyst in the business; Dunphy, compulsively watchable even when spouting complete cobblers; and George Hamilton, a grievously underrated commentator with an enviable eye for detail.

TV3 has none of those aces in the hole. Instead we have Trevor Welch, an uninspiring anchorman who is sometimes let loose on commentary, a discipline at which he makes Stephen Alkin resemble Martin Tyler. (Sample quote from Leeds v Anderlecht: "Mick, will David O'Leary be frustrated at the lack of chances, eh… his side… eh… haven't created?")

In the studio, we have the likes of Mick McCarthy and Mark Lawrenson, of whom the best that can be said is that they look no more inadequate than most other people would when compared to Dunphy and Giles in this particular milieu.

We have Conor McNamara, who has at least improved audibly from his unimpressive early outings, but is still only trotting after Hamilton.

And we have Our Man Aidan Cooney, who seems about as comfortable presenting live broadcasts as Danny Mills does on the right-hand side of the Leeds defence (although Mills tends to show marginally more composure under pressure from swarthy continentals than Cooney does when gazing into the lens).

Meanwhile, the station's scheduling decisions continue to baffle and irritate in equal measure. When you want to see Lazio v Leeds, they give you Arsenal v Bayern Munich, even if ITV is showing the exact same thing two channels away.

Back in October, when the punters were baying for a glimpse of Leeds v Barcelona, they stuck on Anderlecht v Man United instead. Now, tonight, as I write, they have plumped for Arsenal's home fixture against Olympique Lyonnais, in slavish imitation of ITV.

They have done this even though the Anderlecht-Leeds game seems to have far more in the way of bite and needle about it (not to mention the Belgians having much more star quality about them than Olympique Lyonnais). The point being that a broadcaster with better instincts and a broader grasp of the rudiments of covering top-flight football would have grasped the nettle and shown the more glamorous tie.

RTÉ did this in splendid fashion last season, covering the Bayern Munich v Rangers game ahead of the Chelsea-Hertha Berlin match in November 1999, even though the saloons of Dublin were unlikely to be packed out with heavily tattooed men wearing Union Jack scarves as a result.

The good news is that RTÉ will surely snatch back the Champions League rights when they come up for renewal in (aaagghhh) 2003. But things will get worse before they get better.

With Martin O'Neill's green-and-white army poised to bestride the competition like veritable colossii next season, we await with gritted teeth the prospect of TV3's people making inept references to "Glasgow Celtic" instead of merely "Celtic", before they even get around to pronouncing the name of Joos Valgaeren.

It's almost enough to make you hope that the Celts crash out at the preliminary stage to Grasshoppers Zurich, as usual. Almost.