BEHOLD FRIENDS, ANOTHER thread in sport’s rich tapestry, yet another narrative to weave into Ireland’s proud, on-field mythology.

Take two multi-millionaire golf stars (one who looks like a blind, menopausal woman lays out his playing gear in the morning, the other who still packs a Clearasil face wash in his toilet bag), a Welsh footballer who has a long and colourful track record of truly ridiculous behaviour – on and off the pitch – and the social networking site Twitter.

It makes for a heady cocktail.

This weekend our own Rory McIlroy let his fingers do the talking – and ended up in a very public slanging match with former Wales midfielder Robbie Savage.

The Holywood lad – who uses the site constantly to talk football with Rio Ferdinand as well as golf and TV – waded into banter (or ‘bant’, if you’re Savage)  between the Derby veteran and fellow Ryder Cup star Ian Poulter.

But in sticking up for Ryder Cup pal Poulter, our Rory went over the top – some say – when calling Savage a “twat”.

The Derby County midfielder didn’t see the funny side of Rory’s heavy-handed T shot – and quickly scrambled for the high moral ground by claiming his young son had asked him what the term meant.

Wrote Savage:

I was having great Twitter banter with Ian Poulter at the weekend — I criticised his playing gear and he sent me a picture of a Louis Vutton house and a Burberry car asking if they were mine.

But then McIlroy waded in and got it hopelessly wrong. He called me a four-letter word which I’m afraid my son saw. Next time Rory is playing in the Ryder Cup I’ll be waving my star-spangled banner.

McIlroy apologised on Twitter saying, ” Sorry guys, I shouldn’t have said the ‘T’ word, but just couldn’t think of a better description.” He later quickly ‘clarified’ that mea culpa writing:

Let’s get this straight,I wasn’t apologising to @robbiesavage8, I was apologising to the people I offended.

What a piece is work is man.

Here’s a slide show of some of the selected, offending Tweets for you to cut out and keep: