we hear that...

barca bears

All this talk of reunions in Barcelona recently. The cup they won was so prestigious it doesn’t even exist any more. Aren’t they the only team to have a European trophy presented to them in a toilet? And weren’t they subsequently banned for two years (reduced to one on appeal) because their fans went on the rampage afterwards??

You’d think they’d want to keep quite about it all, but no, the The Barcelona Bears, as the Laptop Loyal have been calling them, travelled out for the match of the century on the same flight as the present day’s Bollocky Bears.

We hear that the old BB’s were told to applaud the new BB’s which the old BB’s were not to happy about. One of the old BBs - at one time quite a prolific striker and Scotland international - had a refreshment or two in him and was heard to mutter, “Applaud them, they’re feckin rotten.” Needless to say this didn’t go down well with the Death Star management, so don’t expect to see said striker doing the half time two
bob draw in the near future.

To be scrupulously fair to the old BBs, many of whom are perfectly decent gentlemen - Colin Jackson even had the good grace to help us to a famous league championship by scoring an own goal in the 4:2 game... and what a cracker it was too - our Mordor Mole informed us that they were thoroughly embarrassed by the amount of urinating in the streets of Barcelona by the fans of the old BB’s and new BB’s.

So why didn’t the city of Barcelona organise their own reunion. Guardia Civil Riot Squad, class of ‘72. They could have gone round reacquainting themselves with some old friends, shaking them warmly by the throat for old times sake before throwing them in a police cell for the night.

As a result of the new BBs impromptu washing of Barcelona’s public squares and monuments to national heroes, we hear that Sir Minty Moonbeams has no plans to replace some of the pre-match music blasted out over the Death Star PA system. New tracks were to include, “You’re Simply A Pest”, “Pees Release Me” and “Urine My Heart, Urine My Soul”, although we do understand that Wet Wet Wet have never been so popular with the H-words as they are just now.

Not that you would know there had been any trouble in the Catalunyan capital, of course, if you were an avid reader of the red tops back home in Bonnie Scotland. For this was the Rangers fans on their best behaviour. A bit like visiting Carstairs and being slobbered over by some of the well-meaning inmates.

Yet not only was the public face decidedly urine-splattered, if the papers thought that by publishing stories like that of the appropriately nicknamed ‘Glum’ they were doing anything other than holding ignorance up for ridicule then they were sadly delusional.

‘Glum’ is such an international jet-setter that he couldn’t get a flight to Barca so thought the next best thing would be to get to Malaga then take a cab. Well, Malaga is in Spain after all, isn’t it? Is it not like going to Derry then hopping a cab to Belfast??

Not quite. There would have been some boundary charge on a round trip of 1,400 miles, especially if he told El Cabbie to keep the metre running.

For some reason ‘Glum’ reminded us of this guy - who could very well be his twin brother ‘Dim’ - who appeared in the papers a few years ago. Not content with spelling his hero’s name wrong on the back of his ‘Ranjurs Tap’, the reason he’s flashing a bit of thigh is that he had the same ‘McOist’ tattooed on his leg.

I blame the schools myself.

christmas carroll

Remember Roy Carroll? No, I couldn’t blame you.

Never mind, He used to be a football player, but he gave up the game altogether and signed for Wattie during the summer.

Anxious to assure his new adoring public of his H-word credentials, Roy appeared in Scotland on Sunday. In an interview with Andrew Smith he described how he had been to Ibrox before, when the Orcs played Manchester United in the Champions League.

“Sitting on the bench for United when they met Rangers in the Champions League at Ibrox in November 2003 was where he hatched a plan to bag himself a rare set of mementoes.”

“The game that night was a big thing for me,” Carroll says. “The atmosphere was unbelievable and while it is hard to pick out particular games I watched as a Rangers fan - because so much has happened playing football myself at Old Trafford and stuff like that - I’ll always remember getting all the swapped Rangers tops that night. I picked them all up from the dressing room and kept them for myself. The other lads were happy to give me them because they knew I was a Rangers supporter.”

You can see what a thrill it was for the rest of the Manchester United players to play the biggest club in Kinning Park, can’t you? And yet there is still something quite moving in the image of a star-struck Roy Carroll collecting a pile of discarded and soiled blue jerseys from the dressing room floor where they had been tossed aside by callous international superstars.

derby ref

I see that the Feyenoord v Ajax match the other week had a Belgian ref officiating. Which proves conclusively that, in the interests of fair play for all, you can a have a ref from a different country then?

Can’t wait for the day when a Scottish referee called Father Francis O’Neill gets to ref a Glasgow derby in his spare time. Then again, even the broadest optimistic thinker is sometimes defeated by reality.

Toodloo the Noo
THE EARWIG

 

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