Now I know how other women feel about Louis Vutton handbags: sometimes, you just can't help yourself.

Of course, if I was a boy (or at least, my Boy), I'd need to acquire the whole collection, but frankly, I've no need of a red and green bowl with Mayo written on it. If I was disposed to making my own mayonnaise, I can see how it might come in handy, but at the moment, I'm too busy hand-rearing tadpoles to get frisky with a whisk. As it happens, the tadpoles are from Kerry, which I suppose might merit acquiring a green and gold bowl with Kerry on it in which they might swim but the madness has to stop somewhere.

Round here, it will stop just as soon as I've collected four box tops.

Most sports fans understand that merchandising is a racket, but few really care. I know that the blue bowl with Dublin written on it would cost about a euro if it were white and didn't have Dublin written on it, but then I wouldn't want it. I've loads of white bowls without Dublin written on them, for God's sake . . .

and if I want another one, I'll simply walk into a shop and buy one. There's no box tops to collect in the world of white bowls.

But paint it a different colour and stick the name of a county or a club on it, and the bowl-makers, the t-shirt printers, the scarf-knitters and the badge-casters are laughing all the way to the Big Occasion.

I don't know how much tat was sold in the name of Munster last weekend, though I suspect that the rugby fraternity will never grease the tills the way the soccer and, latterly, the GAA hordes do.

To be honest, I suspect the rugby brigade are probably lumbered with a little too much taste, and are unlikely to buy any old rubbish just because it has Leinster or Munster printed badly across it.

But mercy, we'll buy any old shite. I recall, a few years back, a bunch of us at Rovers rounding on one of our number for being too gullible where tat was concerned. Even as we were questioning his judgement, a shout went up that they were selling fridge magnets in the shape of the jersey in the souvenir shop.

Without another word, we all joined the queue. Most of us also bought the Rovers pencil, rubber and ruler set in spite of the fact that not all of us could write our own names. Another time, we bought mugs with the club crest on them. It washed off after a single use but we kept using them anyway on the basis that they used to have Rovers written on them.

My friend Robbie was by far the most gullible of our number where the Hoops merchandise was concerned. One night, my other friend Martin suggested that if somebody wrote Rovers on a piece of paper, Robbie would buy it for a tenner.

To prove it, he acquired a piece of paper and the 10 pound note duly changed hands. Then Robbie burst into tears. In retrospect, we drank way too much in those days.

I'd like to think the blue bowl with Dublin written on it is in a league of its own, but I know it isn't. The only difference, perhaps, is that while Rovers had fridge magnets and dodgy mugs, they had no ground; whereas the GAA has land, lots of land. They really don't need a pitch in Tallaght and Shamrock Rovers desperately do. I look forward to seeing them play there soon and if I can cool my porridge in a blue bowl with Dublin written on it before I leave the house, all the better.

A wheelie good idea In America, where you can buy everything from higher breasts to lower cholesterol, it is now possible to hire an individual to teach your child to ride a bike. I'll concede to a certain amount of head shaking and "only in America-ing" when I heard about this service, but the more I think about it, the more inclined I am to elevate it to the status of Great American Ideas, along with Ben & Jerry's and George Clooney.

While there are few more rewarding experiences than the moment when your child wobbles off, unaided, across the garden, there's very little of merit for the adult in the journey towards that dawn. I am currently trying to teach The Youngest to ride a tricycle and I just can't seem to muster any enthusiasm for those endless sessions of "turn the handlebars, push with your feet, stop going backwards" that it involves. I am embarrassed for her, at four, for being unable to get from A to B on a Bob the Builder trike and she is embarrassed, for both of us, that we have to even try.

If only somebody else could fill my shoes for this unpleasant bit, I could swoop in at the last minute, let the saddle go and admire the rear view of a departing and triumphant new cyclist. I'd pay for that.

And if he looked like George Clooney and was willing to experiment with Ben & Jerry's, then I might even live the American Dream in my own back garden.

Or yard. I can be flexible.