Gonnae No Dae That

SOME years ago, during the intense debate which followed the SFA's decision to ditch God Save the Queen in favour of Flower of Scotland as Scotland' pre-match anthem, someone asked Alan Rough what he thought.

Big Scruffy's retort has passed into legend: "For all I care, they can play She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain, I just want to get on with the game", rather effectively summed-up your average player's attitude to these pre-game nationalistic posturings.

At least, football doesn't have rugby's particular pre-match problem to deal with. I refer of course to the All Blacks' Haka, which is back in the news this week with newspaper debate, not about whether or not to allow our sheep-worrying cousins from the Antipodes to excite all the gays in the crowd with their macho posuring, but with how the opposition should "respect" this poncified war dance.

I have nothing against the Haka per se; but I do object to the way it has become a choreographed production number.

My late wife wasn't into sport - apart from ice hockey, since her Canadian Dad was a former professional player. But, many years ago she said she wanted to accompany me to Murrayfield for a Scotland v All Blacks game: "Just to see that New Zealand war dance".

Came the moment, she nearly missed it, so quickly did the All Blacks of Whineray, Meads, Lochore, Tremain and Co - real hard me - go through their routine.

The first All Blacks tour on which I worked as a journalist was the notorious 1972-73 affair, in which the Blacks gained an unfair reputation as boorish and self-centred. In actual fact, they were a great bunch, if my experiences of an evening in their company in Glasgow is any indication. That squad, led by the great Ian Kilpatrick and with such warriors as Sid Going in their ranks, only did the Haka in one pre-match: before that legendary final game against the Barbarians, during which Gareth Edwards scored "the greatest try".

I once worked with a guy from Edinburgh, who felt his part in British military history has been scandalously over-looked. It was his carry-out which a well-pissed and well-pissed-off Bill Speakman threw at the Chinese machine gun nest to win his Korean War VC. Speakman, of course, had drunk the contents of the screw tops before hurling them at the Chinese.

Well this guy once held an Edinburgh pub in thrall as he recounted the story of the HLI's first night out in Soeul, following their arrival in Korea. The Americans ruled the South Korean capital at the time and there were several hundred of them lined-up outside a sort of glorified NAFFI, awaiting entry, when round the corner came a platoon of HLI - pure gallus man - freshly swept off the streets of Possil, the Gorbals and sundry other twee Glasgow suburbs and trained to go to war (as if a bunch of Weegies need warfare training).

They strolled straight up to the Americans and the wee 'leader aff' picked out the biggest US Marine at the front of the queue, jumped up and nutted him, sparking off a major battle, which ended British and Commonwealth Troops 1 US Forces 0.

The moral of this story is, when the Blacks start posturing pre-match at Murrayfield, Scotland should send on some wee ned frae Possil, with instructions to "pit the heid oan" All Blacks' skipper Richie McCaw.

That should sort-out this Haka nonsense once and for all.

Failing that, we teach the England team to Morris Dance a reply.

BACK to football. I see a stair-heid row has broken out after four clubs including serial pantomime villains Rangers, failed to send a player or coach to the CIS Insurance Cup quarter-final draw at Hampden.

Now past experience teaches us that when either or both halves of the Old Firm bother to turn-up at these stage-managed draws, the actual reason for their presence is kicked into the long grass as the boys from the Hun and the Daily Rantic stoke the Old Firm fires by extracting some (hopefully) juicy quotes from the media cannon fodder.

This time round, the SFL had a chance to sell the merits (should there be any) of this now Cinderella event. But, they blew it.

I have always maintained, since the SPL/SFL split, the SFL, who run the event, should be making every effort to handicap the SPL clubs and level the playing-field, so SFL clubs have a chance of winning it.

They should start by bringing in a new rule that only Scots-qualified players can participate. If such a rule does nothing else, it will force the SPL clubs to give their young Scots a chance of first team football.