She's No Lady

TODAY'S Nae Luck prize goes to Mrs Victoria Beckham, of Los Angeles. After England's failure to clinch hosting duties for World Cup 2018, Football's not coming home; her husband's recommendation for a knighthood was ripped up; so, she aint going to be Lady Victoria for a wee while yet, if ever, I suspect.

As a lifetime adherent to ABE (Anyone But England), I'm quite happy, except, given our own problems in the game, having the finals in England is perhaps as close as we can get to these finals. Prior to the 1966 finals, Scotland played friendlies against Portugal and Brazil, we could, even if we hadn't qualified, have looked forward to a similar scenario. Also, it would have been no big deal to have travelled to Newcastle or Manchester for games, even without Scotland taking part.

Now, we await the backlash. The likes of the Daily Mail and the Murdoch papers will be lining up to put the boot into the BBC; blaming Panorama's ill-timed programme on alleged corruption for the failure of the bid. The festering sores between the EPL, the Football League and the FA will now re-open, the World Cup bid having plastered over these ancient wounds. They'll be at each other's throats within days.

There will be disbelief in Engurland - how could ungrateful Johnny Foreigner have turned down the future King of England? Have these chaps no concept of heritage and football history? I mean, we're reasonable chaps, surely they love us?

Aye right. The English bid relied heavily on Jack Warner's supposed love of England and support for their bid. The FA have brown-nosed relentlessly to get onside a man about whom there are long-standing and apparently well-founded concerns as to his probity.

John McBeth, perhaps naively had his doubts about Warner and some others on the FIFA Executive; he made the mistake of expressing his concerns to a handful of Sunday paper journalists and, as a result, he was not allowed to become the British vice-president of FIFA: to be replaced, with indecent haste, by the FA's man - whose preferred candidature was heavily-backed by Mr Warner.

By their friends shall ye know them.

Such a pity Princde William was dragged into the whole charade. A greater pity he identified himself as "an Englishman".

With respect sir, you and your relations may have been born in England, of largely English-born ancestors. But, you are NOT English, you are British and as the eldest son of the Prince of Wales and Duke of Rothesay you are British.

Let's look on the bright side - with each passing year, the London-biased BBC has less and less reason to show these old black and white pictures from 1966. This defeat might see them cut back to showing them a mere once per week.