ITV's Tarrant on TV, required viewing back when I were a lad, used to heavily feature Japanese game shows. These often consisted of strange folk undergoing the most tortuous tests of endurance for apparently no reason, often in extreme weather conditions. If any of you are taking a trip to Tokyo in the near future, it might be worth flicking channels to check if last Wednesday's match between Ireland and San Marino is there, as some smug presenter shakes his head in wonderment at how those crazy Europeans could put themselves through that.

It was dreary, dreary, dreary stuff.

Even drearier than that last sentence.

And everyone in the RTE studio wanted to be anywhere else but there. This despite it being a 'fond' farewell to the old Lansdowne Road. After a compendium of the memorable moments from Irish soccer's tenure in Dublin 4, Bill O'Herlihy sought the opinions of his studio guests on their great moments at the old stadium. It was all after Johnny Giles' and Eamon Dunphy's time of course, while Liam Brady had these touching words: "It never really got going when I was playing heref half-full crowds, very rarely it was full. It was only under Jack really that it started." Dry those eyes.

In the post-mismatch analysis, the ennui was overwhelming, with the three lads barely able to get a sentence going.

"Was it a penalty, John?" asked Bill.

Giles could barely lift his head to answer "f Ah, probably Bill." They could hardly even stir themselves to criticise the gaffer, with some guarded compliments on his resistance to getting carried away in the post-match interview.

O'Herlihy tried to get a rise out of Dunphy but to no avail, with Dunphy merely grinning and occasionally saying "What?", like a schoolboy hiding a catapult under the desk. If it was the 1950s and schoolboys still used catapults. Mobile phone then, or whatever it is they use to intimidate others these days.

Finally the end credits appeared, before they went back to the studio for a little Apres Match, in which the three lads officially jumped the shark. Jumping the shark, for those unaware of the phrase, refers to a TV show going past the point of no return, the point at which you can definitively say that something that used to be good is now officially and irreparably in decline. It derives from an episode of Happy Days in which the Fonz jumped a shark while water skiing, an emphatic nail in the coffin of the character and the show.

In Apres Match's case, they decided to satirise the RTE panel by repeating a sketch that the original panel had already done, and had made a better job of. Back when Celtic tonked Benfica in the Champions League, Brady referred to Shunsuke Nakamura as "a genial player", erroneously referring to his creativeness and quick-thinking. "A what kind of player Liam?" shot back a mischievous O'Herlihy. Brady tried to fight his corner but, semi-realising his mistake, he became a little red-faced, with Dunphy stepping in to save him any further embarrassment. Not that this stopped O'Herlihy bringing it up again at every given opportunity throughout the rest of the broadcast. All taken in good humour, all very amusing.

The Apres Match lads did the same thing, word for word, except it wasn't as funny. Seriously. As mentioned here before, after the World Cup final, the edited highlights of the actual panel was funnier than anything Apres Match could come up with. When the satirists are copying their subjects verbatim, it might be time to look somewhere else for material.

Elsewhere, Setanta's All in the Game is one of the station's first attempts at original programming and, as an initial offering, it boded well. The idea of the series is to cover the sports that 'make us what we are', with the Poc Fada featured in this particular episode. It offered a taste of a well-known yet rarely seen event, talking to the competitors as they made their way through the Cooley Mountains.

Brendan Cummins, Tipperary's goalkeeper and the eventual winner, spoke of how, as great as it is to represent your county in Croke Park, this competition meant as much to him. He felt more connected to the mythology of his sport through the epic nature and setting of the Poc Fada. Watching the likes of Cummins and Davy Fitzgerald plot their way around the course, pausing only for a bit of chat and a ham sandwich, it was difficult to imagine any event that could be more inherently and idiosyncratically Irish.

This was a tidy piece of work, on an event that's not particularly easy to cover. With RTE, TG4 and now Setanta all in the business of GAA features, hopefully the competition will see them all raise their game.