As Graham Taylor famously said, 'Do I not like that'.
I have to say, I’m not liking this nil all business that’s creeping into the Premier Division over the last couple of weeks. Having got through the first three weeks of the season with no scoreless games, we’ve suddenly had two nil alls on the double.
Two last weekend and another two this weekend.
When you consider that only three games were played on Friday night, it isn’t great for the MNS crew trying to wind the audience up into a state of wild excitement.
Fortunately we had Tony McDonnell and Richie Sadlier on the couch to keep our female viewers happy, and we also had Paul 'Ski' McGee for the slightly more discerning female viewer.
For those of you who don’t remember Ski as the blonde bombshell goal scorer for Ireland, QPR and Preston, as well as almost every League of Ireland club in history, we’ll feature some of his goals on the programme in the coming weeks.
Paul was at Terryland Park on Friday night, where manager Ian Foster was unhappy having taken his Dundalk team to face his former employers only to have the match called off as the teams prepared to leave the tunnel.
Referee had a difficult decision to make
In fairness to referee Pádraig Sutton, he was left in a real quandary. The heaviest of the rain only arrived in the minutes prior to kick off, and from the pictures we broadcast on MNS, it looks like the referee made the correct decision, albeit, one the discommoded the Dundalk team and it’s supporters.
If the ref had allowed the game start, there’s no way it could have finished, and if a player had suffered a serious injury as a result of the underfoot conditions, the finger of blame would have been pointed squarely in the direction of the match officials.
It’s annoying, and particularly when it’s the only day of the season where you can’t retire to a local hostelry for a drink and a chat about what might have been.
Unless, that is, you are lucky enough to be in Limerick when a rugby match is taking place.
(When are they ever going to get rid of the ridiculous law once and for all that prevents folk from supping a pint on Good Friday? Surely in the modern multicultural Ireland we live in nowadays, the current situation can’t prevail for much longer.
We’re jumping through hoops trying to get tourists to visit the country, badly in need of the much needed finance they bring, and then on one of the busiest tourist weekends of the entire year, we close all bars for the day. Crazy. If you don’t want to drink on Good Friday, by all means abstain, but don’t force everyone else to march to the same drum.)
What’s this got to do with football? Not a whole pile, unless you’re a miserable Dundalk fan in Galway moments after the game has been called off at the last minute.
Is it not ridiculous that if you’re a rugby supporter down the road you can go to the pub to your heart's content, but because the sport you follow happens to have a round rather than an oval ball you can’t. As I said above, Crazy.
I feel better now having got that hobby horse of mine off my chest.
Scheduling clash between MNS and League matches
A couple of people emailed us, and put messages on our 
Facebook page, questioning why we didn’t reschedule the programme because there were a number of matches being played on Monday night.
Unfortunately television doesn’t work like that, and we had no part in the scheduling of the matches directly in competition with the programme. Obviously this is not the most desirable situation for us.
The beauty of the MNS website and the RTÉ Player is that anyone who missed the programme can watch it back at their leisure, and the good news is that we’ll have the goals from the Monday and Tuesday fixtures this week, along with next Friday's matches on next weeks bumper programme.
One of those matches will of course be our live game on RTÉ 2 on Friday night: Shamrock Rovers versus Bohemians at Tallaght Stadium. After the disappointing game at Inchicore last week, hopefully this week's live game will be a cracker.
Finally, I was told about an interesting scenario that arose at Ferrycarrig Park on Sunday. Apparently the FAI sent down corner flags with the Airtricity logo on them but the referee Keith Callanan made ground staff replace them, citing FIFA regulations that corner flags may not carry advertising material. One to note for future reference.
