5 out of 10

In Ireland, every week, at least 5 (occasionally 6) out of the ten premiership games are shown live on TV. For example, this weekend:

Sat 12:45pm Liverpool v West Ham
Sat 3pm Watford v Man Utd
Sat 5:15pm Man City v Arsenal
Sun 4pm Blackburn v Chelsea
Mon 8pm Middlesboro v Portsmouth

That's 10 hours of football if you take in the half time breaks and 15 minute post match interviews. That's a lot of time in a working man's weekend. It's like I have two jobs. No wonder the washing is piling up.

Saturday, normally starts with the 10-11:30am five-a-side-cobweb-killing astro turf game, leaving one's blood circulating at a normal rate and an appetite for salty food and coffee. Lot's of coffee. However, due to holidays etc. the Saturday morning runaround was cancelled due to insufficient squad members.

Hence a more lethargic start to the Saturday. My significantly better looking other half had a hair appointment in town at 11am and a lunch date with a revisiting emigrant friend at 2pm. She estimated her return home would be sometime around 7ish. She had abandoned her plans to supplement her lunch with alcohol due to an inordinate amount of wine the previous night medicinally administered to dull out the constant replaying of the new Bob Dylan record which had been released that morning. What I'm trying to say here is was that I didn't need to leave the house to collect her from town. I was home alone with satellite TV and the fridge...

For those of you not familiar with the dual couch set up for marathon sports fests, here is a brief summary of the theory in it's rudimentary form.Two couches are positioned along parallel walls lying perpindicular to the angle of the TV screen. If the TV is north facing, then the two couches will be east and west facing respectively. The south facing arm rest on each couch is the 'head' position. When a human male is immobile for long stretches of 2 or more hours, the smaller vertebrae can become irritated at the lack of support as the molecular structure of the cushions and spring mechanism setlles in one position. This necissates a 'couch substitution'. The couch rotation system allows the primary couch to regain it's 'vigour' so to speak and one can 'switch-back' at the end of the fourth hour of the sports-fest.

Clear? Good. Dateline 12:30. Breakfast inhaled and coffee pot full. Various mini muffins within arms reach. 13:40pm. Liverpool unveil their new Dutch striker after about an hour. 2-1 up at half time against a West Ham team high on endeavour but low on quality. A spectacular Daniel Agger 30 yard strike equalised and a Crouch strike put them ahead right on the break. (Agger's goal can be seen here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVGbCXSAi9k). A good game that could have been turned upside down had Bowyer not missed a sitter in the dying minutes. Kuyt, however, looked nothing like he did in a Holland shirt. He looked like he could play. He was intelligent, enthusiastic and a big handful for defenders. It's too early to tell but the advance previews would certainly point to a box office hit, so to speak..

3pm. First couch switch. Muffins gone. Coffee dreggs only in pot. Switch also to Brazil nuts and Pilsner Urquell. Watford host Man Utd and the usual array of ex scouse players fan the flames of Mancunian hatred both in the RTE studio (Ray Houghton, Trevor Steven) and in the commenatry box (Jim Beglin). Who hires these clowns? Impartiality is a word they'll never understand. United were easy favourites and the leaped to an early one nil lead thanks to a well taken Silvestre goal. However in the usual comedy defending slot Mikael Silvestre starred in his usual role of the 'dummy' as he allowed a shimmy to wrong foot him and the cross ended up beyond Van der Saar for one all.

It took another piece of high jinks to put United one up when the worst back pass of all time allowed Giggs time and space to put Utd back in front. Without too much sweat being broke United sailed comfortably to their 3/3 record so far in the league. There's a highlights clip here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LsVSyZ6C2k.

5:15pm: Pilsner numero quatro as Arsenal travel to Manchester to give a lesson in football to Man City. And a lesson they gave. In football. But not in winning. Arsenal suffered once again from their desperate quest for the perfectly executed goal. A clumsy challenge from Hoyte led to a penalty which Joey Barton despatched with the help of a crossbar to make it one nil. Arsenal passed, passed, passed and passed a little more while never really offering any thrust or goal bound end product. This Arsenal team likes to play pretty football, and fair play to them. But sometimes you gotta dig in for a result, scrap, scrap, scrap, scrap and scrap some more. Thierry Henry, who has more admirers than a Swedish Supermodel, didn't want to be there. His body language betrayed a distinct lack of interest and this could be Arsenal's undoing.

7:15pm and the newly coiffured lady of the house returns with glossy magazines in tow. She assumes her cat-like curl in the corner armchair and miraculously a large cold glass of white wine appears at her fingertips. I'm beginning to think her name should be Samantha...

Saturday's highlights round up starts in 15 minutes time whilst I change couches for the final time. I enquire as to what will be served for dinner when I am reminded in a timely fashion that I do the cooking around here. All this armchair athleticism made me forget who I was...