RANGERSGATE having turned into Groundhog Day, I have nothing more to add to the ever-growing pile of manure which we hae been wading through for weeks. David Green, Craig Murray, Charles Whyte, enough tears, both real and crocodile have been shed - and many more have still to be shed. Much, much more has still to come out I feel.
So, to other matters, starting with the Team GB squads for the forth-coming London Olympics. The Women's squad has been revealed, and it includes two Scots, Kim Little and Ifeoma Dieke. Congratulations to the two girls and I actually think the Team GB women, based as they are on the England Women's side so well-coached by Hope Powell, has an outside chance of a medal; the two Scots lassies certainly add something to that mix.
That said, I have never deviated from my belief that in insisting on an all-UK selection criteria, rather than the England-only compromise worked out by the four Home Nations FAs, the BOA has done British football no favours.
The selections, with Little and Dieke in the Women's squad and - reportedly but as yet unconfirmed - Ryan Giggs and Craig Bellamy in the Men's squad, clearly breach FIFA statute 8, paragraph 3. I don't believe anything Sepp Blatter says, so can still see this breach of rules coming back to haunt the UK associations.
FIFA and in particular UEFA might not want to see all four FAs forcibly amalgamated into one UKFA, but, they sure as Hell want to get their hands on at least three of the four permanent UK seats on IFAB and any rule breaches they can use towards that end, they will.
The Team GB Men's squad, managed by Stuart Pearce, will be, by all accounts, the last England Under-21 squad, plus Micah Richards and the two Welsh veterans. Fair enough, that squad did well - however, while most of their contemporaries on the continent have moved-on, some, like the Germans - Ozil and Co becoming established full internationalists, most of the England squad are still struggling to get regular games in the Premiership, because of the big English clubs' need to spend big on foreign players. Also, the FA hasn't taken the Olympic Games challenge seriously; they put England's Euro 2012 campaign first for a start.
English football is, with each passing year, becoming more and more EPL-obsessed, the big clubs don't want the Olympics as a distraction, so they have never bought-into London 2012.
The last time the UK entered a team in the Olympics was in the qualifying rounds towards Munich 1972. Bill Currie of Albion Rovers was, by the way, the last Scot to play for Team GB, when he featured in the first leg of the final qualifier, against Bulgaria. Team GB won that one 1-0, but - fielding an all-English squad - lost the second leg, in Sofia, 5-0.
That 1972 campaign, like the 2012 one and all the rest, was an English-run operation. The FA has always been football's voice on the BOA. Every other sport - even curling, which is only played at two ice rinks in England - started a "British" governing body to run the Olympic Games teams. The SFA has never bought-into the Olympics, it was always left to Queen's Park to liase with the AFA, the SFA "blazers" have never held Olympian ideals - maybe if they had, they wouldn't be sitting on so-many unsold tickets for the games at Hampden.
The 2012 Men's team has been ill-prepared and badly organised. That 1972 squad played TEN warm-up games prior to the Bulgarian double-header. (Sporting trivia piece here - a certain Martin O'Neill, then an 18-year-old, won his first Northern Ireland amateur cap in one of the ten warm-up games). The 2012 squad will play ONE game, in Middlesbrough's Riverside Stadium, just before the Games. realistically, they have little chance of medalling, and when they don't, the wrath of all England will descend on poor old Psycho. Why - well he boobed badly, didn't he - HE LEFT OUT BECKHAM.
How could he, didn't he realise the London Olympics were being organised purely to suit Brand Beckham - the fool (Pearce - Beckham's foolishness has long since been established).
The Daily Telegraph's website, that forum of all things middle English, has seen over 600 postings on Beckham's absence, since it leaked out this week. Only one has mentioned the lack of preparation, the harum-scarum way it has all been (dis)organised - the rest are either for or against Beckham.
And you thought Rangersgate was the only show in town?
Scotland and England, two neighbouring nations, separated by radically different views on football.
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