The entire nation will be medication next week to overcome the withdrawal symptoms that so many soccer fans will be experiencing once RTE puts Dunphy, Gilesy and even Kenny Cunningham back into cold storage at the end of the European Championships.

Of course they’ll be back out of their boxes in September once the Premiership kicks off, but it won’t be the same thing – because it’s hard to get passionate about a league dominated by pampered players on a hundred and fifty grand a week.

No longer will the silken skills of Paul Green grace our screens; where else other than at a major soccer championships could a guy who’d do well to make the office five a side team come up against the likes of Modric or Iniesta?

And who else other than Eamon Dunphy would have the gumption to march up and down Grafton Street dressed in full clown regalia, because he’d incorrectly predicted that Ireland would have got out of their group.

The only way Trap’s Army would have come out of their group was if there was relegation to a lower group on the basis of being absolutely useless at football.

But as always the football was secondary to the actual entertainment, which occurred at half-time – like three massive fountains of footballing knowledge, Giles, Dunphy and Brady spouted forth with the first things that came into their little heads.

A few tournaments back, someone claimed that our panellists were better than the Brits because they actually said something more than merely offering bland platitudes.

Unfortunately our intrepid trio took that to heart and – with chests permanently puffed out like giant peacocks – they drop crumbs of gold onto Bill O’Herlihy’s lap.

Bill is happy to play the buffoon, asking the obvious questions and deploying himself as a simple conduit between these greats and the rest of us.

So they talk at Bill like he either has a hearing problem or they think he knows as much about football as Seanie Fitzpatrick knows about careful banking.

The reality is that Bill is like every Corkman ever born – he’s happy to play the foil but when he shuts his eyes on his slumberdown pillow each night, he knows he has the beating of any of them.

For more, read this week's Connacht Sentinel.