Watch brief clips here and here.
Eamon Dunphy wrote in his autobiography:
“The satirist Dermot Morgan and a number of other clowns were seated on our World Cup set. They were having fun taking the piss out of Bill, John and myself. We were depicted as inarticulate cliché-spouting morons. In order to work, parody has to bear some resemblance to the original object it’s designed to mock. What Morgan and [c]o. were parodying was the BBC/ITV football panels of universal ill-repute, which were indeed inarticulate and dismayingly banal. Everyone involved in RTÉ’s football coverage worked really hard to offer viewers an intelligent alternative to the dismal British soccer coverage.
“In a rage I phoned Mike Horgan. He knew nothing about the Morgan takeover. Tim, I couldn’t get. Next morning when I finally got hold of him, I told him I was finished with RTÉ. They had shot themselves in the foot. ‘Put fucking Dermot Morgan on your panel tonight’ was my parting shot. Vincent Finn, RTÉ’s director general, called to apologise and ask me to reconsider. But I was gone beyond recall. At best, those responsible for this travesty were stupid. At worst, Morgan was playing to a nasty cultural stereotype.”