What a weird old week. Wonder what, say, Duncan Edwards, would have made of Robbie Fowler's delightful and disarming suggestion towards Graham Le Saux. Wonder how those parents attending the game at Stamford Bridge explained it away to the kids. The whole thing would have been laughable had it not been so depressing.
English soccer has provided more than its share of nihilistic images over the past 15 years, from death through hooliganism to death through gross official negligence to sheer innate on-field nastiness. There was a perception that the game there had recovered and was in the midst of a new, enlightened epoch yet week after week, that league is perennially associated with stories which the National Enquirer would spike on grounds of etiquette and discerning taste.
The shot of Fowler, bent over and leering, provided the Premiership mug-shot for the past seven days and again throws a question over the league's worthiness, whether it is really a sport or just an over-hyped excuse for the most base manifestations of low living.
It was with suitable solemnity that Gary Lineker raised the issue on Football Focus and suddenly it seemed that the lad Fowler's cheeky gesture had simply prompted an urgently needed debate on the spectre of homophobia in the English game. It's a curious contradiction about English soccer; apologists for the game constantly harp on about the traditional, even honourable rules of machismo which prevail yet the players celebrate the basic point of the game -scoring goals - with the sort of over-elaborate heavy-petting normally reserved for the cheap seats of school discos.
Subsequent commentary on the Fowler affair guided us to the conclusion that Graham Le Saux was perceived as "soft" for being a Guardian reader (maybe worth debating) and was into the deeply subversive art of collecting antiques. Fowler half-heartedly contended that his movements had been bizarrely misconstrued, that he was in fact, doubled over in frustration at news of Le Saux's contempt for porcelain wash basins from the late Victorian period. Nonetheless, the boys at Focus opened the debate.
Gordon Taylor, from the PFA, allowed that the matter was difficult, because "it was about sexuality." Football, he explained, was a macho game (ah, yes), hence the inevitable tendency to witch-hunt any player not inclined towards exuberant displays of boorishness.
In the studio John Gregory declared that the spectacle had been unedifying in the extreme and went about pin-pointing the reasons for it.
"The off-the-ball incident has always been in football and they are generally caught on camera now," he observed.
"There's more cameras to pick everything up now," concurred Gary. "That's the pity," concluded John with a grimace, before they turned their attention to the goals of the week. Ban those cameras, boys.
Of course, it won't matter. In this country, we will continue to wear those garish United and Liverpool tops and cheer on teams with whom we have absolutely no geographical or historical association with worrying abandon. But last weekend the English were in town for the annual skirmish with the oval ball and as usual all provincial soccer loyalties were cast aside to make way for the traditional blarney about the auld enemy.
The English arrived in Dublin and humoured us in our winsome state of giddy expectancy. On RTE the boys were in glad old form, although Tom McGurk opened the programme with the somewhat dubious invitation to "stay with us and you'll miss nothing." Unhappily prophetic words they would prove to be.
Before long, we were treated to Neil Francis's regular if increasingly psychedelic pre-game report. For Saturday's match, Franno had himself lying back on a shrink's couch musing over the nature of our supposed hatred for the English. His findings, much like the aforementioned Focus debate, were inconclusive. But Franno was in praiseworthy mood, delighting in Martin Johnson's "sexy hands" (sort him out, Robbie, sort him out) and extolling the incredible work-rate of the England big man.
As we watched footage of Johnson lumbering gracelessly if effectively after a chipped ball Franno declared that if he had been in a similar situation, he'd have been "holding a cigarette and standing on the half-way line." Well, we all need our moments of broody contemplation.
Over in Paris French winger Phillipe Barnat Salles might as well have lit into a pack of Gitanes for all the impact he was having in open play against the Welsh. He was the one player who dourly refused to get into the fin de seicle exhibition of Five Nations rugby, the sole abstentionist on an afternoon of scarcely believable adventure.
Will there be any better highlight this year (in rugby) than Thomas Casteignede's insouciant dash from his own 22, capped with that casual reverse flick? Why is it that Neil Jenkins makes kicking seem cool? And why aren't all rugby games like this? Maybe they should have cancelled the tournament forever immediately after that game, deciding that Northern Hemisphere rugby had reached its zenith and that anything after would be irrelevant.
Because what followed certainly seemed kind of academic. Early on in the Ireland/England game, Paul Wallace was penalised for "boring into his opponent", whatever that involves. But why single him out?
Both teams should have indicted for shamelessly boring the whole country. Sure, there were isolated moments of excitement which were soon stamped out in favour of remorseless grinding and gnashing which all seemed sort of purposeless after the flair and free-spiritedness we had witnessed over in Paris.
"It's all so slow and predictable," sighed Wardie at one stage. And it was. At least such accusations can't be levelled at Robbie Fowler and those shining boys of the English soccer brigade. Well, not the "predictable" bit anyway. But slow . . .
