Be warned, lightning can strike twice and will do so again at this World Cup as Philly game descends into farce
Turns out it isn't always sunny in Philadelphia
A day when we waited for history and a day when history was made at the FIFA World Cup but ultimately a day that ended in farce as the RTE pundits were left to fill air time with chats about everything from horse sales to robot footballers.
France against Iraq kicked off just an hour or so after Lionel Messi rewrote history with the goals that confirmed his standing as the World Cup’s leading scorer of all time, goals against Ireland’s upcoming Nations League opponents Austria by the way.
As Messi overtook Miroslav Klose in the scoring charts so Kylian Mbappe served notice of his intentions to eventually overtake the Argentinean in that regard with a quite stunning opener against the Iraqis.
Then the rain and the lightning hit Philly as the players made their way to the dressing-rooms for the half-time cup of tea. And the farce descended on this World Cup as quickly as the rain fell on the home of the Eagles.
The RTE pundits - Kevin Doyle, Aine Gorman and Stephen Kelly - did their best to fill in under the watchful eye of Clare McNamara. Over on the BBC, Kelly Cates did her best to keep Gael Clichy, Olivier Giroud and Joe Hart on script.
Between them, the pundits in Dublin and London tried hard to stay relevant. As part of his self confessed waffling, Kevin Doyle leaned on his horse breeding experience to explain that Lionel Messi is not your typical footballer. At a horse fair, he told us, the Lionel Messi types would be left behind in favour of the thoroughbred specimens.
Stephen Kelly expanded on the Messi debate during a discussion on Ronaldo’s World Cup failings to date. A football robot, Kelly suggested, would be more Ronaldo than Messi.
Fair enough, even if Messi is more likely to stay longer in this tournament and score more goals than the divisive Ronaldo. See, even this viewer joined the irrelevant conversation as we waited to see if it would ever be sunny again in Philadelphia.
At least Joe Hart did give me some ammunition over on the BBC. As you will see from our World Cup podcast today with Rob Shepherd, I have fears over the ability of England goalkeeper Jordan Pickford to keep his team in this tournament when it comes under real pressure.
Turns out, according to Hart, the ball is the problem. Once it goes at any height there is no spin and the ‘keepers are struggling to cope with it.
So the weather break did some good. I might have learned more than that only for the fact that I went to bed at midnight - two hours after kick-off and an hour or so after the half-time break.
At that time, there was no solid news on when the game would resume. And by then I’d lost the interest to wait or listen to any more waffle on RTE or the BBC.
It was all very farcical. Like so many other things that have gone wrong in this tournament. And it is bound to happen again.
At least, we all know who to blame - Gianni Infantino for awarding the tournament to the United States and Donald Trump for not ensuring the torrential rain and the lightning was kept away from the Philadelphia Stadium. It’s their fault.