Foul Play couldn't help but notice a reference to gaffe-prone Eurosport commentator Archie McPherson in last week's Mad Hatter's Box.
In the questionnaire, the handsome, silver-tongued Evening Herald hack Mark Evans had listed the avuncular one as his favourite TV personality, adding, perhaps sardonically, that McPherson was *professional to the last!*
My favourite McPherson moment, and there is stiff competition, occurred in the dying stages of the France 98 qualifiers. Eurosport were showing coverage of a crazy match between Turkey and Wales, which ended 6-4 to . . . well, go on, guess.
In the middle of proceedings, McPherson ejaculated the following deathless bon mot. *Hakan . . . inside to Arif . . . and he helps it on to Tolunay. Of course, all the Turkish players are known by their Christian names.*
The more pessimistic elements of the Irish footballing public (this week, just about everybody) will no doubt feel that, instead of George Hamilton, it might help to have Mr McPherson and his regular reassuring injections of trivia on hand in the RTE box to help leaven the black mood of despair that will inevitably have encircled Lansdowne Road by the end of Saturday evening.
Well, enough of this shit. Here's a good one for you. Ireland will win the first leg, perhaps 2-0, and will score once in the away leg. (Never let it be said that Foul Play belongs to the amnesiac school of prediction-avoidance, which holds that nobody ever remembers if you get it right, only if you get it wrong.)
It may seem as though Foul Play is once again dancing cheek to cheek with our old friend Fatal Hubris, but having scanned the form, read the intelligence reports, deciphered the runes and consulted his stars for the week, he feels duty-bound to curse McCarthy's men with the aforesaid forecast.
Over the past few years, the Turks have mutated into one of the more handy outfits in European football. Having got their obligatory catastrophic home defeat of the campaign out of the way - in this case, a 3-1 collapse to Finland last year - they are approaching the play-off in justifiably confident mood.
By all accounts they regard our boys as an honest lot of plodders, dangerous if given room, but eminently *takeable*.
Interestingly, they have in common with their Irish foes a penchant for using the same solitary method of scoring goals, over and over again, until it begs for mercy. In Ireland's case, this translates as Staunton hoofing the ball up to the front two on a wing and a prayer. Turkey, meanwhile, from all available televisual evidence, seem to be over-reliant on right-wing crosses being repeatedly pinged onto the head of their lanky number nine, Hakan Sukur.
What I'm trying to say here is that they're a serviceable enough side, but far from the sinister, swarthy world-beaters that they have been portrayed as. About four of them would walk into the Irish side, another three of them might do, and the others wouldn't have a prayer.
Galatasaray's recent capitulation to Chelsea was seized upon, somewhat bizarrely, by Bill O'Herlihy as proof that Turkey (with whom Galatasaray share about four players) are nothing to be afraid of. With this in mind, the Turks should now be unbackable with the bookies after Gala's wins over Hertha Berlin and Milan.
Turkey outplayed Germany in Munich in their final qualifier, but this means next to nothing. German football is at its lowest ebb for decades. Two of their three best clubs went crashing out of the Champions League last week, and the other one, Bayern Munich, needed the assistance of handily-placed woodwork to make it past Rangers the following night.
Moreover, the Turks were apparently aided that night in Munich by the support of a huge crowd of guest-worker expatriates who far outnumbered their Teutonic hosts in the Olympiastadion, in much the same manner as the Irish fans who swiped all the tickets for the Italy game in Giants Stadium in 1994.
And what of the return leg? Perhaps understandably, bearing in mind the grisly events of Ireland's 1991 game in Turkey, where Jack's Army spent the evening having bottles of piss hurled at them by a howling mob of lunatics, there have been numerous scare stories doing the rounds in the popular press, regarding the kind of ferally filthy reception awaiting our boys in Asia Minor.
These tales have stirred up much fear and loathing in the mind of the average Irish fan, whose only real mental image of Turkey is that of Brad Davis getting buggered senseless in Midnight Express.
The reality may turn out to be more mundane. A couple of Foul Play's family took a holiday in Turkey some years ago, mere weeks after Galatasaray had dumped Man United out of the European Cup. The brother, bloody-minded individual that he is, took to walking around Istanbul wearing a United shirt, but got little discernible response except for the occasional yell of *Ryan Geeegs, eest good player, yes?* from moustachioed street-vendors.
Two-nil this weekend, then, but you didn't hear it from me. n