Sports Watch: Brian O'Driscoll is the Irish Beckham

10) Thierry Henry (down, down)

It is easy to like Henry for his all-round good eggy demeanour and for not being William Gallas. But now he has deliberately handled a ball and he is the devil incarnate. The truth lies in the middle ground, but this is not an area regularly populated by the media and so Henry is the new Profumo. He has certainly sullied his reputation in a way not seen since he was driving Renault Clios. Handball? Next week he'll be slaughtering sheep.

9) Ireland (down and out)

They want a replay because of a handball. What a load of tosh. While we are at it, let's replay the 2005 Champions League Final because Steven Gerrard dived to get a penalty. Or, indeed, any Premiership match where players repeatedly try to con officials with dives, shirt-pulling and feigned injuries. Certainly, the 1966 World Cup Final should be erased from the records. The game is awash with little cheats and the way to clean it up is not by making refs fitter. It's by making players pass a fit and proper person test.


8) Lord's (up)

Sports Watch has mixed feelings about news that the old ground is going to be subjected to a £400 million makeover. The philosophy behind this lavish plan is that bigger is always better. However, Lord's is one of the best sporting arenas in Britain. Does it need year-round burger vans and an underground academy, the latter sounding like a slightly edgy prep school? We say no and bring back the twin towers while you are at it.

7) Martin Johnson (down)

English rugby is at a low ebb but Johnson can't win. Even if, and I know that it is highly unlikely, he does. England, you may remember, were rubbish and slated for most of the 2003 World Cup. In fact until it started raining against France in the semi-final. We want running rugby but when we try it and that fails, as in the 1991 World Cup Final, we ask why we didn't play to our strengths. Last week England beat the side ranked fourth in the world. It was deemed rubbish because it was not achieved with the sort of free-flowing rugby never seen in this country. Madness.

6) Jenson Button (down)

Funny old game that Formula One lark. You win the world title but end up being ushered towards the door by the team. If that does not back up the oft-fought claim that you could put any of the top 10 drivers in the best car and they would probably win the title, we don't know what does. Or maybe it is money. Either way, Jenson is now Lewis Hamilton's team-mate at McLaren. We suspect the champ may have had a better time had he simply superglued his head to a rabid pitbull.

5) Brazil (up)

We know England had a second string out, but you have to remember that our first string includes Emile Heskey. Look at Brazil and then England and the difference in class is a chasm. Sports Watch hopes Jinky Joe Cole becomes a stalwart in the coming months because he is the only player in the team who knows panache is not a low budget airline. Can England win the World Cup? Of course, but we will need a lot of luck, a Gerrard swan dive, some good penalty takers and an iffy handball.

4) Manny Pacquiao (new entry)

His fight with Miguel Cotto was a throwback to the violent ring duels of yore. It made Sports Watch wince to witness the mad bravery of Cotto who looked like a beef casserole by the end, and it is hard not to wonder whether this is still a valid sport in 2009. Pacquiao, though, is an all-time great and now looks set to enter politics in the Philippines. It may be statement on the way boxing is regarded around the globe that, while he runs for office, Joe Bugner is being forced to eat kangaroo testicles in a jungle with PJ and Duncan.

3) Sir Alex Ferguson (up)

God love him, the old sourpuss has been speaking sense this week, having a dig at players. Referees was last week and the one before, if you remember. Next week it will be the Tate Modern. You can't keep a good grouser down. “Today they are very protected, more fragile than ever, and that’s a lot to do with the type of people who guide them." Reading between the lines we think that is actually a dig at himself. Very magnanimous.

2) Brian O'Driscoll (up)

You are about to lose to Australia. Time is almost up. The defence is rock solid. Who you gonna call? No, not Ray Parker Junior and Sigourney Weaver, but BOD. It just happened to be his 100th cap for Ireland. It was a sleight of hand not seen in an Ireland match since, er, Thierry Henry. O'Driscoll writes his own scripts. He is the Irish Beckham.

1) Video technology (up)

Everyone wants it apart from a few hardy old souls who do not want to diminish the influence of match-wrecking refs. If we insist on remaining in the dark ages then it seems only right that Alan Wiley and Martin Hansson should be thrown into the nearest river to see if they float. If we refuse to employ simple goalline technology, we risk more tainted results. As ever Ian Holloway put it best. "Otherwise you may as well be a monkey with a stick poking in the ground for some ants."