Easy on the eye: the horse of the year award is surely on the way to Zenyatta after 14 wins out of 14 starts

All talk, no action from Irish TV analysts

BY the time you read this the dust from last night's battle at Croke Park should just about have settled. Not the battle on the field of play of course, but the aggravation that would have erupted between the analysts in the TV studio if Trap's midfield failed to function and Ireland went down in flames. It's a source of national pride that RTÉ football studio, the only place in the world where sports analysis consistently makes headline news. Or then again, maybe not.

ESPN, the leading US sports channel, have been having a few problems with their baseball analyst Steve Phillips, although unlike the RTÉ panel, his particular mischief-making has nothing to do with on-field affairs.

His troubless began when he embarked on a short lived extra-marital dalliance with 22-year-old Brooke Hundley, a production assistant at the sports network. But love didn't prosper and when the relationship ended, Hundley, according to Phillips anyway, took the break up badly, as she reportedly began to harass and threaten her former lover's wife and children. Hundley counter claims that the contacts she made with the family were merely an attempt to stop Phillips from pestering her.

Phillips is a very high profile broadcaster and when his indiscretions hit the news reports both he and Hundley were fired by ESPN. He has subsequently entered a treatment facility "to address his personal issues," although this hasn't stopped his long suffering wife, Marni, from filing for divorce. It's hard to blame her given that Phillips had previous form in this area. When he was General Manager of the New York Mets he admitted to sleeping with a female staff member and subsequently settled a sexual harassment suit out of court. Those RTÉ controversialists are just pussycats underneath it all.

Zenyatta topping the lovely horse poll

Sometimes it is hard to explain the beauty of top class horse racing to a non believer. This is understandable because to the uninitiated a Salisbury seller can look just the same as a Curragh Classic. But then along comes a performance like that of Zenyatta in last week's Breeders Cup classic and it all makes sense. The five-year-old mare gave the strong field a long start, ambled along and then swooshed past the leaders in the final furlong to make it 14 wins in a 14 start career. Her victory has started a public debate on who should be horse of the year that might help the fast diminishing profile of racing in the United States. Her only real rival is Rachel Alexandra, who has won eight races this season including a classic against the colts but failed to turn up at Santa Anita as her owner doesn't like the track. Sporting fellow, him.

Trouble caps off another volatile season

The Swedish football team Assyriska Föreningen engender the same kind of love and devotion among the Assyrian peoples of Iran, Iraq and Syria as Glasgow Celtic do in the Irish tribes of Donegal and beyond. Formed in the early seventies by Assyrian immigrants and refugees the club has steadily built a fanatical following and a half decent team. So their involvement in a promotion play-off caused great excitement in the Middle East.

Their two leg play-off against Djurgårdens was beamed live to over eighty different countries and success would have propelled them to Sweden's Premier Division and perhaps even to the Champions League somewhere down the road.

Things began well when Assyriska won the home leg 2-0, but then went pear shaped in the away game which they lost 3-0. And that's when the trouble started.

Although Sweden has famously given the world a model society and a major peace prize, the people of the Middle East have constructed a different kind of legacy. The Djurgårdens fans celebrated by invading the pitch and violently assaulting several of the visiting players.

It was a sad end to a volatile season for Assyriska. Earlier this year they lost their club house in a fire and one of their best players was badly beaten by another set of supporters.

Danes issue green warning over golf balls

Although the phrase 'at the heart of green' generally brings a sense of joy to golfers, a recent report from Denmark suggests that the sport is a long way from being anywhere near 'green.' The problem lies with the golf balls. It can take up to a thousand years for a ball to fully biodegrade and as over three hundred million of them are lost or thrown away every year in the USA alone this is starting to become a problem.

Now the Danish Golf Association, which probably has too much time on its hands, has conducted a series of tests which confirm that high levels of toxicity are released by decomposing golf balls and that this is proving detrimental to the health of the local fauna and flora. The case was strengthened by another research project in Scotland when scientists searching for a 'wee beastie' in Loch Ness instead found thousands of homeless golf balls on the bottom of the lake.

So when you hook one into that blasted river down the left of the 18th this morning, the resulting two shot penalty may be the least of your worries. Just remember that your grandchildren may end up drinking it, so slow that swing down.