The fickle finger of football fortune wags against Newcastle,” Jonathan Pearce said. You'll not often hear poetry such as that in the footballing context, least of all on the last day of the season when everyone is knackered.

Note the use of alliteration. Even Gerard Manley Hopkins would have struggled to equal that, back in the English poetry game's pre-Premier League era - all those f-words, the f-word being so appropriate, of course, when sinking into the Coca-Cola Championship is the immediate prospect.

But in the heat of a relegation battle that goes all the way to the wire, you need a commentator who is ready to dig in and scrap hard for his programme. And Match of the Day, as it probably knew it would, found that commentator on Sunday in the shape of the stalwart Pearce.

If we're going to quibble, I suppose, we'll have to point out that fortune, fickle or otherwise, had little to do with what happened to Newcastle United at the weekend. OK, so the goal that defeated them at Villa Park took a deflection that we are contractually obliged to refer to as “wicked”.

But, as Alan Shearer took pains to point out in his post-match interview, it was about what happened “over the 38 games”. He said it twice, in fact, and the implied bracket (“not just over the very few games for which I was in charge”) could not have been clearer had he written it in big letters on a piece of cardboard and held it over his head on each occasion.

We worried about Shearer on Sunday. In particular we worried that if he sucked on his cheeks any harder his entire head would disappear down his neck, making him the first Premier League manager to vacuum-pack himself in the course of his duties.

They worried about him on Match of the Day, too - but then, he's one of their own. As Gary Lineker mournfully reflected, it was only a few weeks ago that the Geordie legend was sitting on “that very sofa”. You felt Alan Hansen and Mark Lawrenson give a little shudder at that point, the whole sorry episode providing a dire warning to them about what can happen if you are foolish enough to step out of the tent, zip up your Parka and head off across the frozen tundra in search of Jaffa Cakes.

Ah, well. Shearer will be back. On Match of the Day, I mean. And when he returns, I hope they give him a little ripple effect, so that we can all be sure it was just a dream.

So much for the fickle finger of footballing fortune at Newcastle. At Hull City, the fickle finger of fudge was just enough to give the kids a treat.

Unfortunately the treat included Phil Brown, Hull's shy, retiring manager, advancing into the centre of the pitch with a microphone and honking “We are staying up” and a selection of other fans' favourites. “Proof that Britain's not got talent,” Lawrenson reckoned and it was hard to disagree. Surely you would rather go down than endure that?

By then we had witnessed television's brave but doomed attempt to build a little drama into Middlesbrough's afternoon away to West Ham United. But Middlesbrough were always going to be relegated in the same way that Susan Boyle was always going through to the final of Britain's Got Talent. There was no tension to ratchet. Fans wept on cue, even so, and Gareth Southgate, the Teesside club's manager, declared it “a sad day for the football club”. “Desperately sad for the football club,” Lineker agreed. “Particularly for the football club,” emphasised Hansen.

Then again, here was Hansen's quantum theory of relegated football clubs: “They don't score enough and let in too many.” That was certainly true of Middlesbrough, Newcastle and Hull in 2008-09. In the end, you might say, it was only sad that one of them had to stay up.

Still, congratulations to Match of the Day, which was poised over the “trapdoor” trapdoor, yet managed to confine itself, our records show, to one, early reference to the trapdoor (early trapdoors, I guess you would have to call this) and no more.

Whereas, if you'd have had a £2 coin for every time someone mentioned the trapdoor during the multichannel live skirmishings on Sky Sports and Setanta that afternoon, you would have amassed enough for a perfectly respectable parachute payment of your own.

This was the season that Match of the Day 2, under the resourceful stewardship of Adrian Chiles, mounted its most sustained challenge yet to Match of the Day's supremacy. Even so, MotD2 was eased aside on the final day (a Sunday, don't forget) to make room for Lineker and the “flagship”. But these days no show can take its eminence for granted.

It would be nice to see the programme use the summer interval for a bit of strategic rebuilding, assuming the funds are available. Which, of course, they're not. See you all again next season, then - same time, same sofa, probably even same shirts.