MNÁ na hEireann, shame on you. It's a terrible thing attempting to reach the peak of sporting prowess, only for the applause for your achievements to be drowned out by the giggling and gasping of aroused females. Trust us, we know. But here, of course, I refer to the �? hAilpíns, three bare ches. . . sorry, brothers who have become the rippling epitome of our new nation.

And from what was shown in Pat Comer's excellent documentary on Thursday night, they are fully deserving of our worship/envy/pants in the post.

Seán �?g is, of course, the unofficial poster boy for modern Ireland; Multicultural, multi-lingual, multi-ab flexible, with a pride and a commitment to his adopted culture that most of us could never imagine. For somebody like this to be getting a puck in the face for Na Piarsaigh of a winter's afternoon is a happy accident indeed.

He has stayed in Cork, never having had the opportunity to travel and play sport professionally in Australia as his brothers Setanta and Aisake have. He's playing the Jimmy Stewart role, working tirelessly in the local savings and loan (which managed to get more than its fair share of advertising in this documentary) while his brothers seek adventure elsewhere. He never struck you as a man capable of bitterness though, and has the grand sense of perspective to know that the cards he has been dealt aren't the worst in the deck. Yet as he put it, if somebody had come knocking on the door waving a contract back when he was in his teens, he wouldn't have flown to Australia, he'd have swam.

You wouldn't put it past him, certainly not if you're one of the people who saw the photograph of him punishing a medicine ball that featured in these pages last summer. The picture caused a curious sensation, as if the country was shocked that we could count among us such a complete athlete. Like the famous underwater shot of Muhammad Ali, Seán �?g appeared to be the perfect specimen. As Setanta guided us around Melbourne, he shook his head in wonder at what his brother might have been capable of if he'd made the move to Australian rules football.

The contrast between a rainy February night training in Fermoy and the sun-kissed plains of Melbourne AFL was stark. As Setanta and Aisake sweated in their club's state-of-the-art gym, the goal in the back garden of their home (or 'Semple' as they know it), stood forlornly in the gathering darkness, its crossbar broken. Not that their mother was crying about it. A dynamic Fijian, she described how she would stand in goal while the lads were playing, modest about her net-minding skills in hurling, but reckoning she saved more than her fair share when facing a football. Off she went to feed her pair in Melbourne, delighting the boys who admitted to struggling in their efforts at self-sufficiency. "Sure if you're hungry enough, you'll make something, y'knaw."

Setanta has clearly embraced the new life, constantly lamenting about Seán �?g having to "bust his ass" at the bank while he lives the full-time dream of a professional athlete. Those that might have been harbouring hopes of him returning to hurl anytime soon must have cringed when he admitted that a staged puck-around was the first time he'd hit a sliotar for a couple of years. His focus now is on the oval ball, and his is a dedication that must be a joy for the Carlton staff to work with. Aisake is similarly enthused. Larking about on the beach with their mother, they evinced enough goofy charm and natural energy to keep the national grid going for weeks.

But the piece really hit its peak as it followed Seán �?g back to Fiji, and his mother's island of Rotuma. He hadn't been there for almost 20 years, and having been submerged in the wave of Celtic Tiger Ireland, was half-expecting the place he remembered to have been updated, modernised, tarmacked maybe.

What he found was the same island paradise, where everything moved at its own pace and everyone seemed to be part of the same family.

Too good to be true? Okay, we know we may have only been shown the most rustic parts of the island and no doubt there was a bit of a traditional show put on for the cameras and yes, there did seem to be an awful lot of love and peace around to be true, but (and it's a big-ass but), to raise an eyebrow towards this scene was akin to being unmoved by the ending of It's A Wonderful Life.

This was about how the man himself felt. He seemed genuinely awestruck as he calmly relayed to camera that "I could come back here, this is a home for me, if I want it." We've had him for longer than we could have hoped for.

He deserves it.