ON Tuesday morning, I watched Adelaide v Hawthorne’s live AFL game from The Adelaide Oval. The stadium holds 55,317 people. Due to Covid, the capacity has been reduced to 10,000. The seats are marked out and in the manner of an examination hall, no one is sitting beside anyone and the spectators are two metres apart. Their system is working very well.

For the southern (very temporary) coalition however, nothing beats not being there. At the weekend, I was in a bar in the West with around 200 other people, watching the senior championship semi-finals on the big screen at an empty McHale Park.

McHale Park holds 25,369 spectators. The previous rule of 200 spectators would have meant that they could have placed them in the ground so that they couldn’t even throw a stone and hit each other. But instead, we have descended into ridiculousness.

As for the bar I watched from? It serves food and as far as I could see observes all of the covid regulations. So, instead of being 10 metres apart outdoors (transmission rates of covid outdoors are minimal) the 200 supporters were drinking and roaring at the screen as the action unfolded and sinking pints. After the game, everyone stayed on drinking pints and discussing the game, instead of heading home from the ground. Am I missing something?

The folly of this fresh southern ban on spectators was highlighted when TG4 showed a most entertaining Tyrone championship game (most readers probably didn’t realise that Tyrone football can be entertaining) between Trillick and Killyclogher.

The game was played in front of a big vocal crowd so there was a cracking atmosphere as it moved to its enthralling finale, Trillick winning 4-3 on penalties when their goalie saved Killyclogher’s last penalty. In the North, we are permitted to have 400 spectators at the games. Say what you like about Stormont, but we are well ahead of the Dail on this one. Thank God for Arlene Foster.

There is no logic to the decision by Michael Martin and his coalition to ban spectators. The evidence does not support it. It is a foolish ban and he will suffer for it, sooner rather than later.

GAA folk in the 26 counties are rightly enraged. The ridiculousness of it is highlighted in the fact that a Gael from Monaghan need only drive a mile across the border to watch an Armagh Championship match live.

Speaking of Monaghan brings me to RTE’s head of sport Declan McBennett. In Saturday’s independent he spoke (again) about sacking me after the drawn All-Ireland final.

I have no problem with being sacked, but if Declan is going to talk about it he should have the courage to do so honestly. If he had said he didn’t like me and didn’t want me around that would be fair enough. I am a big boy.

The reality is that he disliked me intensely and this was no secret from the moment he took over. Early on in his tenure, I got a phone call from one of the Sunday Game producers. He said “I’m just letting you know Joe. McBennett is gunning for you.”

This wasn’t a surprise to me. His body language towards me reminded me of a line of John Mortimer’s about a judge who disliked him. Mortimer said that whenever he appeared in court before that judge, “He bore the facial expression of a Mother Superior in the middle of a particularly heavy period.”

Once, outside Croke Park before a big game, McBennett’s son and friends flocked around me for a photograph. On another occasion, his father in law was in the RTE box and we had a most enjoyable conversation. In the background, there was the Head of Sport, his face frozen in a pained expression.

We never saw the previous Heads of Sport, who I remain on very good terms with and still keep in contact. Declan by contrast is a bureaucrat with an obsession with statistics.

Soon after he was appointed, all of the pundits were summoned to a meeting at RTE. We all arrived, a little bemused as to the purpose, only to receive a lecture on how we should behave and what he expected from us. It was all very schoolmasterish.

I was particularly taken aback when we were each given a several page handout on the excellence of SKY’s punditry and pushed to emulate it. (After all, they had 2,000 viewers for the All-Ireland Football final the previous September against our one million plus. As I put it at the time, “more people went to mass in Donnybrook that Sunday than watched the game on SKY.”)

One part of the handout that caught my eye was a section praising Jamie Carragher’s punditry. I said “Is this the chap who spits on 14 year old girls?” prompting uneasy laughter. I persisted. “Is this the sort of role model you want us to emulate?” More uneasy laughter.

He established a WhatsApp group for the pundits which he absolutely dominated, and which caused great mirth among the pundits. I kept some screen shots just for old time’s sake. His voluminous contributions were long message chains of banal statistics sprinkled with praise for the statistician. Here is a much shortened, random example from the Tyrone Kerry semi-final (all messages from him):

-Kerry 36% return

-Tyrone 75% return

-Kerry 2/10 from play. 20%

-Productivity 2 scores per 10 possessions Kerry.

-Kerry 14 points from 17 shots. 82%

-Tyrone 60%

-Kerry have gone from 36% return to 82%

-Tyrone have gone from 75% to 60%

-Kerry have 10 scores from 13 from play. That is 77%!

-Role reversal Kerry 9/11 82%

-Tyrone 4/10 40%

These strings of statistics were endless, game after game. I rarely posted to this group. Once, after a string of similarly dull statistics, I posted “In other news, bear shits in woods.” This got great laughs from the other pundits (privately) but one of the producers rang me later that day to say it had gone down like a lead balloon with the headmaster.

This was the atmosphere created by him. We were no longer freelance adults hired to speak our minds (a principle that had been sacrosanct at RTE sport until his arrival). Now, obedience was demanded. We were errant schoolboys and he was the Dean of Discipline.

Some of the pundits responded by arse licking, even if they privately made fun of the situation, posting messages to the group like “Great point Declan” or “Fascinating insight Declan.” Others bore it uneasily. Grown ups like Colm couldn’t conceal their displeasure.

In the face of this hostility from the Boss, the producers continued to allocate the big games to me, including the All-Ireland semi-final and final. Then, a few days after the drawn final, which was an epic day and inspired huge debate, he told me I was out.

His reason (not that he needed one as my freelance contract expired with the drawn final) was “At 11 minutes past 3 on Sunday you said to another analyst (Pat) ‘Would you stop patting my arm.” I laughed and said you are joking. He said no, it was unprofessional and unforgivable. He repeated this three times. He mentioned also the debate over the second yellow card for Jonny Cooper and said I was wrong about that. I said that I assumed Ciaran Whelan would be sacked as well so. He said no, Ciaran had just received a warning. I was incredulous. “A warning over a debate about whether it was a yellow card? Have you lost your marbles?” He didn’t answer. Just repeated “You are out,” with relish.

A few weeks later I got a text from him saying he was working on a “token of appreciation” for me for my 20 years with RTE. I never did receive that Waterford Crystal clock.

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