Bedad, the fancydan sports journalists like Michael Lyster and Des Cahill beyond in RTÉ must be gettin' rightly worried, muses An Fear Rua... I mean, they must surely be thinking of contacting the big buckcats in the National Union of Journalists to get them to lodge a 100% pay rise for 'danger money'.

The same RTÉ lads always had a very high opinion of themselves. An Fear Rua recalls the one time they arrived down in Gowlnacalley to film the local hurlers facing the famous Glen Rovers in the first round of the Munster Club Championships, they thought they were God's gift to the local women. (Ah, the RTÉ fellas, not the Glen Rovers lads! Sure, the lads from Blackpool were perfect little gentlemen, more interested in the pints of Murphy's afterwards than the women - as befits all true Cork men). No, there was more than one member of Gowlnacalley-John Redmonds camogie club who had to defend her goalmouth against the incoming tackle of an RTÉ camera man or floor manager, and barely lived to tell the tale. Canon Guiry's trusty 'Bod Dubh' was working overtime that fateful weekend. A few months afterwards, didn't one of the girls - a hefty full forward, who started to put on a lot of weight - leave for Dublin in very mysterious and hurried circumstances.

And why would the RTÉ lads be looking for 'danger money'? Sure, haven't the NATO brass hats now decreed that TV journalists are 'legitimate military targets'... Didn't they stick a cruise missile into the main TV studios in Belgrade, where they had been regularly (satellite) dishing out propaganda on behalf of the Slob of the Balkans.? Even the most hardened GAA critic of 'the meeja' must have paled at the thoughts of the NATO action. Men and women who, year in and year out, are up and down like... well, you know like what... to the microphone at county or provincial conventions to condemn 'the meeja' must have wondered how they never thought of sticking a cruise missile into the headquarters at Montrose. Sure don't we all now it wasn't Colin Lynch at all who did all the pulling across Tony Browne in Thurles last year. It was all only a conspiracy dreamed up by RTÉ's Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh and other members of the 'meeja'. Well, the great Ger Loughnane said it, so it must be true.

An Fear Rua fondly recalls that the last 'cruiser' the RTÉ lads had to contend with was the good Dr Conor 'Cruise' O'Brien, who as Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, slapped the Section 31 gagging order on them. But sure, the 'Cruiser' has long ago retired to his eyrie in Howth and the lads are still churning out the programmes, same as ever. An Fear Rua remembers travelling out on the no. 10 bus to Belfield, to visit his old friend an Bráthair S G Moggerley who was teaching Applied Mathematics in UCD, and as the bus approached RTÉ Montrose, the conductor called out: 'Next Stop! Fairyhouse!'. That, of course, was in the days when most decent Irish people thought a 'fairy' was a little fella who lived in ancient fort on some equally ancient farmer's lands.

Remarkably, that great socialist, the British Minister for Overseas Development, Ms Clare Short, said that in war, TV studios and journalists were 'legitimate military targets'. With thinking like that at British government level, it is little wonder it took the poor lads in Crossmaglen Rangers more than twenty years to get a commitment from the Brits to withdraw from a section of their grounds. Sure, anyone knows that a GAA ground in Ulster is a 'legitimate military target' as well.

Still, the NATO planners showed they had something of a sense of humour when they unleashed another cruise missile at the bedroom of the Balkan Slob's official residence in Belgrade. An Fear Rua thinks they hoped Slob's wife, Mira Markovic, might murmur in his ear: 'Darling, did the ground move for you , or was that just another cruise missile hitting its target...'

Them military lads... An Fear Rua always says you couldn't be up to them.