Correct me if I'm not wrong – as Mark Lawrenson said the other night – but André Villas‑Boas's arrival in the Premier League has been a genuine and uplifting treat, especially for those of us who enjoy listening to Jonathan Pearce wrap his laughing gear around foreign names. Every commentator has his specialism – John Motson, for instances, approaches football with such boyish glee you can't help wondering if he still points excitedly at diggers and trains, too – and Pearce tackles the pronunciation of non‑English names with so much brio and elan it should be classified as an extreme sport. During Chelsea's defeat at Old Trafford the great gurgler attacked those slippery, shushing Portuguese Ss at such high throttle that when Raul Meireles came into play as well, you had to fear the BBC man was going to swallow his tongue.

All health concerns about Villas-Boas, meanwhile, centre on his natty suits. These are so tight they must severely constrict his circulation and breathing. And when the former national coach of the British Virgin Islands drops into his trademark crouch you really have to worry for the fellow. Something has to give, and so far it hasn't been the seams of his trousers.

Tightness was something of a sporting theme last week – even if you leave aside an obvious joke about bars in Queenstown. (Is it just me, incidentally or is Mike Tindall really morphing into Thing from the Fantastic Four? I don't know if the England centre has also been exposed to cosmic rays, but the way things are going by the time the Six Nations come around he'll be the colour of institutional cheese and yelling "It's clobberin' time!" at every opportunity.) On Saturday a friend phoned to air his view that Ireland's historic victory over Australia at the Rugby World Cup was all down to the tiny Australian shorts. "They said the Irish were restricting the Australians, but I'm sure the Wallabies' shorts were restricting them even more," he claimed.

I pointed out that rugby players' shorts were small even back in the days when most sportsmen wore vast things that looked like they had been fashioned from a pair of downed Zeppelins. "They were always little even though they were made of canvas and had a pocket in them," I said. "Why did rugby players need a pocket, by the way? Football and athletic shorts never had a pocket in them. Tennis players need a pocket to put the spare ball in, but what do rugby players put in their pocket? A silk handkerchief, knuckle‑dusters, Susan 'The Invisible Woman' Storm's telephone number? And for the Australians David Campese always had tiny shorts," I added, "though sadly they were never quite tight enough to stop the flow of nonsense travelling from his brain to the part of his body he spoke out of."

"That's as maybe," my friend said, "but you go and take another look at them. You're not telling me you can be at your most brutally effective round the breakdown in anything that constricting. They were worse than the ones Paolo Di Canio wore when he was at Sheffield Wednesday."

Leaving aside the fact that, as far as I'm concerned, Paolo Di Canio will always be top dog in the skimpy shorts stakes, and never mind what anyone says about Mario Kempes and his Pampas hot pants, I have to say that my friend had a point. The shorts sported by Quade Cooper and co were indeed so extremely little that before the forwards bent down in them some abdominal alignment would have been essential. And in the split second that hitch and shift took, Paul O'Connell and the Irish pack had seized the initiative. That's how narrow the margins are at the top level of sport – there's literally only a gusset between elation and calamity.

The Wallaby shorts are very tight, and the have a satin-like sheen to them, too. No doubt the manufacturer will have some plausible scientific blather about aerodynamics, moisture contraflow and debag alarm reduction to explain why this should be, so we can dismiss the notion the Aussies are making a deliciously cheeky wink to disco nights at the Embassy Club circa 1978. Though I'd have to say that anyone who responded to the haka by doing the hustle would win my support.

As to why Villas-Boas's suits are so very small, well, the Chelsea coach is yet young, so it's possible he's still growing. Certainly his jackets give the impression of an expanding adolescent schoolboy whose mum has insisted: "Stop making such a fuss. There's another term's wear in that blazer at the very least." In the end, though, I suppose we have to assume that the tight suit is deliberate, part of the Villas-Boas brand. Whether it will lead anywhere I am not sure. However, I can't help hoping that at some point, when he has stopped monkeying around on the edge of the technical area like an Iggy Pop tribute act, the man is going to unleash the mother of all Norman Wisdom impressions.