FAIR play to Neil Lennon, he doesn’t hold a grudge.

The former Wanderers boss appeared on the BBC panel for the Northern Ireland game yesterday sitting at arm’s length from his former foe Alan Shearer.

For the uninitiated, Shearer once caught Lennon with a kick which wouldn’t look out of place in the WWE during their playing days at Newcastle and Leicester. Incredibly, the striker, then England captain, got cleared by an FA disciplinary panel.

Jens Lehmann was handed the unenviable task of sitting between the two – and thankfully it all went peacefully, both men laughing it off when Gary Lineker dropped the incident casually into the conversation.

Lennon is a good pundit. Despite over-using the word “raw” when describing any player younger than 30, he speaks passionately and intelligently about the game.

I found him great company when talking about football in general. As always, Wanderers tended to spoil it.

Former Arsenal keeper Lehmann has been good value as a radio pundit in these championships. Known as somewhat of an eccentric in his playing days he is definitely not short of an opinion, warning Northern Ireland of the dangers of dropping too deep.

Jonathan Pearce went into hyperbole overdrive from the moment he took over commentary duties.

I am not a Pearce-hater – but was there really any need to shoe-horn a reference to Northern Irish playwright Seamus Heaney into his introduction to a group game against Germany?

“It’s not very often I find myself disagreeing with that great County Londonderry-born, Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney, but I have to here at this humid hothouse at the Parc Des Princes because he once wrote ‘anyone born and bred in Northern Ireland can’t be too optimistic.’”

Anyone who followed that diatribe would have ended up dizzy, never mind optimistic, Jonathan.