IT is hard-enough picking a side here on earth; just be grateful, when (if) we get there, so few of us will have to pick the best-of teams from those available to the managers of the teams, playing on the Eleyssian fields of the hereafter.
If heaven really is heaven, it almost makes you want to rush up there to see real, flowing, attractive and attacking football every day. Coversely football in hell must be terrible - buses parked on both 18-yard lines, kicking matches every time - well it will make the Auchinleck and Cumnock committeemen who are sent there feel at home.
But, imagine if you were Harry Swan, or whoever was manager of the Heavenly Hibs, when, just before kick-off on Saturday, St Peter walked in with: "Your latest signing, Eddie Turnbull". It wouldn't be so-bad for Swan say, he did after all manager Hibs to three league titles and he had Ned as one of his Famous Five. But, from now on he'll be looking over his shoulder for his job and in any case, who drops out to allow the Heavenly Hibs to field four-fifths of the Famous Five? I assume up there by the way, Joe Baker is holding the number nine fort for Lawrie Reilly, still, happily, with us mortals; but who, until Saturday, was holding the 10 shirt for Eddie?
I was lucky enough to see Turnbull play and to interview him on two or three occasions - a great character and man - he will be mourned beyond the confines of Easter Road and Pittodrie.
A pal of mine who played under him at Queen's Park tells me, Eddie in full, four-lettered flow had a wondrous command of early Anglo-Saxon and could use the F word as noun, adjective, adverb, pronoun or whatever. Rest in Peace sir.
THE daily Rumour Mill on Scotsman.com is essential reading for all lovers of football banter. Invariably 99% of the posts concern the Old Firm and a large percentage of these are mutual tit-for-tat posts by wind-up merchants of both hues.
It's great stuff. Some of the posters have the ability to read sectariansim and bigotry into what seem to be the blandest of posts - Mason Boyne (Robbie Coltrane's wondrous Orangeman creation from his days with BBC Scotland's Comedy Unit) is alive and well, as is his Celtic alter ego. It just makes you fear for any end to the quasi-religion cloaked in football constituency in Scotland. But what really worries me when reading the Rumour Mill is: these guys have computers and internet access.
I WAS at the Ayr v Currie rugby match on Saturday. We've seen our football referees denigrated almost non-stop this season. We've seen decisions good and bad, right and wrong debated ad nauseum from August to now and received wisdom appears to be - Scottish fitba referees are shite.
Across the road, the Scottish guys who play with odd-shaped balls have been mounting a season-long campaign to big-up our much-maligned rugby referees, not one of whom has been considered good enough to go to the Rugby World Cup in the autumn, while some Irish and Welsh guys who are frankly, a joke, will be there.
Then, along came Peter Allen in the Wales v Ireland game, to tell a bigger porkie than even Dougie McDonald and Shug Dallas. At least Celtic won that game at Tannadice, Allen's porkie-pie cost Ireland an international and a Triple Crown.
On Saturday at Millbrae, Andrew McMenemy, a young, full-time referee, who is being fast-tracked to the top by the SRU gave a totally inept display which, had he made it during an Ayrshire junior game, somewhere like Auchinleck or Cumnock, would have kicked-off World War III and maybe earned him a nice warm bed in Ayr Hospital's A&E Unit.
He made Willie Collum look competent - honest. That said, McMenemy and his two touch judges, who were equally poor, vigorously defended their positions under fierce questioning from Ayr members in the club house after the match. This is much-more civilised than the football scenario whereby referees are smuggled into and out of grounds under security escort and much-healthier. All was resolved, even if they agreed to differ on one or two decisions, within an hour or so of the final whistle.
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