MANY thanks to my old mate Roddy Forsyth, for the above line, which I have shamelessly borrowed from his Daily Telegraph report on Scotland's 3-1 Carling Nations Cup win over the Welsh, in Dublin on Wednesday night.
The ever-sharp Roddy got the idea from the fact 'Also Sprake Zarathustra' or the theme from 2001 - A Space Odyssey was playing as the teams took the park in an Aviva Stadium which looked like a green-painted Ibrox Park in the early 1980s: you recall the joke - they had discovered a design fault, the seats faced the pitch; as the Bears voted with their feet and refused to turn-up to watch a Rangers team which could barely win a corner.
At least two batallions of the Tartan Army made it through the volcanic ash to Dublin, with a third batallion due there for Sunday's Carling show-down with the Republic. (the Tartan Army v the Green Army, in Dublin - that has to be a wet dream for the Guinness marketing department).
I believe this quadrangular tournament can be a good thing, if they get the format and marketing correct. I don't think it can merit using the really big stadia - the Aviva, the three big Glasgow grounds or the Millennium Stadium and, for sure, no British tournament can work properly unless the Celtic Fringes get a chance to have a kick at "the Common Enemy" - you know, Them, Ingerlund.
The timing is also wrong, at the end of the ever-stretching domestic season, we are all footballed out. The Nations Cup could be "a Gunnell" - not pretty, but it can run, but I feel it needs a make-over.
Still, good to see the Scots scoring goals, albeit, as was the case against Norther Ireland in February, at the expense of a poor Welsh side.
MICHAEL Fry, not a journalist I have ever thought of as a fitba man, has penned a very interesting piece in this morning's Scotsman about the Scottish Government's proposals for a crack-down on sectarian behaviour at football matches.
Fry makes some good points, which I hope our MSP's take on board. He also reitterates a thought which I have had myself. After the Old Firm Scottish Cup replay, the UEFA fine on Rangers, the Hearts v Celtic game and the BBC documentary of recent weeks, a band-wagon is rolling to the effect: "something must be done". If there is one thing politicians hate it is a band-wagon rolling without them on board, so they are all scrabbling to put in their pennyworth.
"El Chooky" Salmond wants legislation against sectarianism on the statute book before the new season, which kicks-off in about eight weeks. Our glorious leader has I fear forgotten - law passed in a hurry is generally bad law.
Scotland is still, in many ways a tribal society, particularly in West-Central Scotland. The "Proddies" hate the "Papes", both hate the "Pakis" - heck, in some parts of Ayrshire, Fife and the Lothians, marrying someone from the neighbouring village is still seen as founding "a mixed marriage". In a lot of Scotland, a white girl seen with a black boy is risking extreme censure - we can still be a narrow-minded wee nation, look how the shit hit the fan this week when the General Assembly debated gay ministers.
We've got a lot of problems still, in this 11th year of the third millennium - but nothing gets us more-aereated than the followers of two football teams fighting a (mainly verbal - let's be honest) battle about religion and politics in Northern Ireland. I accept there is some low-level copy-cat behaviour around some other clubs, but the main problem concerns just two teams, whose management will do as little as they can get away with in sorting-out their followers - since sectarianism sells.
We don't need fresh legislation - all it takes is for the SPL and the SFA to call-in the chairmen and chief executives of the two (three if we include Hearts) clubs and tell them: "Our match delegates will be listening, just one instance of offensive chanting at your matches and you will be docked however many points you win in that game." The football authorities should also list what are "offensive" songs and chants - starting with any of the Irish political and religious "folk songs" - these have hee-haw to do with Scottish football.
The clubs then have to crack-down, starting with their official supporters clubs, warning them "We are listening, we will pin-point where the singing and chanting is coming from, and if it's from an area where your members are, no tickets".
By this method, the decent fans would self-police and in very short order the lunatics who were unwilling to change would be chased from our game. What happened thereafter is a government problem, but football could at least say "We've cleaned-up our mess, now you clean-up yours". Simples.
SO Jack Warner and yon big Arab frae Qatar are allegedly on the take - haud me back, ah never kent.
Aye right - when, in one of the most-gloriously indiscreet interviews in the history of sport, back in 2007, John McBeth made a few pertenent observations about some of the people he was set to deal with as the new British vice-president of FIFA, his reward was to be roundly abused by a highly-affronted Mr Warner, Sepp Blatter and the others of FIFA's elite. McBeth, hardly the epitome of charismatic leadership, but for all that a true football man whose dedication to Clyde was most-laudable, was suddenly declared unsuitable for the corridors of power in Zurich, he was dropped like a big stone and England's Geoff Thompson almost fell over his own feet in his haste to get onboard the Zurich gravy train.
McBeth went as far as he legally could in sign-posting Warner as a crook, but no, to Thompson and the FA he was one of the first gentlemen of football. Fast forward four years, Warner in the interim having at the very least lied to the English about his voting intentions towards the 2018 World Cup and when another of the FIFA blazers, the wonderfully-named Chuck Blazer, blows the whistle on him, the FA and the English football press are on Warner's trail with the zest and enthusiasm of the Beaufort Hunt's foxhounds.
As he sits in retirement in his Glasgow home, John McBeth can at least say "Aye well, ah telt ye".
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