Wrong turns and red cards

"I think I've taken a wrong turn", I growled as I pulled up alongside Glasgow's Royal Infirmary after leaving Colin's house in Kirkintilloch for home.
It could be the current roadworks on the A80 or it could just be my navigational skills but leaving Kirkintilloch to join the motorway proved itself too confusing for me last night. Especially being in the darkness, surrounded by traffic cones and countless 40mph signs, glaring everytime your headlights hit. For some reason I decided to take the road for Glasgow, believing that to be the best route back to EK. Of course I was wrong and if I'd stayed on the traffic cone filled road coming out of Kirkie, I'm sure I would have come across a road for Carlisle, somewhere through the plastic orange forest. These roadworks on the A80 feel like they have been a permanent fixture for years. It certainly feels like years driving up it, having to stay at 40mph the whole way. Still, nice to see the Motorway Maintenance employees are keeping their jobs.
Kenny and myself had been invited by Colin to watch the old firm game in his new pad. We had a good night. Colin was the perfect host, serving up a big footie buffet comprising of pizzas, sausage rolls, mushroom tasting scotch eggs and enough onion rings to feed a stadium along with plenty of beer, coke, bru and he even took requests for tea and mulled over the possibility of a bovril.
I'm not really into football in any big way and never have been. I always yearned to be a good footie player and enjoyed playing when I did but never could quite get the hang of it. I was always the last, or the second last, to be picked for the playground teams. I even tried to get into the school team at one point, under the watchful eye of Mr Stevens, the Janitor (a big, tall, scarey guy with a shock of grey hair who shouted at you if you tried to throw your lunch in the bin). When the other guys in school were all collecting the Football Panini stickers, desperately trying to swap for their favourite player, I was collecting the Star Wars stickers, trying to get the Millenium Falcon. I guess I was always just too much of a geek.
As a result, I've only ever had a feint interest in the sport of the masses, watching only the occasional game or getting excited about a World Cup and then watching a whole four matches. So I turned up at Colin's house not even knowing who played for what team. Bougherra? Was he not in the Jungle Book? With Baloo? (nose). It's been months and months since I last sat and watched any game of football. The World Cup final was probably the last football game I actually made a point of sitting and watching and last night reminded exactly why.
Last nights performance was more of a circus than a football game. Overpaid, over hyped egos, pouncing about a pitch for 95 minutes, doing their best to look aggressive, baring some teeth, squaring up shoulders, waving hands about whilst screaming and swearing, knowing full well most viewers back home, young and old, are more than capable of the odd lip reading session. One minute acting like cavemen, and the next rolling around the grass after being tapped on the shin.
One Rangers player spent five minutes talking to a rather embarrassed looking injury man desperately trying to make it look as if the bounce he'd suffered on the back of the head, from a passing thigh, was actually, in any way, painful.

It didn't stop with the injury time along with the red and yellow cards though. After the final whistle the managers started haranguing each other, Ally McCoist and hired ned, Neil Lennon, almost starting a boxing match in the dugout. The two, supposedly professional, bosses exchanging words and then growling at one another, spitting venom as police and trainers rush in to break them up. Or rather just before they would have had to actually hit each other which, let's be honest, was never going to happen. You wonder what they would have done if everyone had just left them to it. They would have angrily looked into each others eyes for a while longer and then looked around for suggestions on what to do next as Jim White got all excited in the commentators box.
Neil Lennon called they're little exchange 'passion' today. A wonderful statement. Scottish sports fans all over the country, watching and listening, believing it's okay to act like a complete kn*b becuase it's merely considered 'passionate'. You wouldn't appreciate the game without the 'passion'. A great example of Scottish football to set, not only the West of Scotland but, the rest of the football watching world.
34 arrests were made in and around the stadium for a variety of racial, breach of the peace and sectarian offences.
Stamping out sectarianism in Scotland, the big battle Alex Salmond is trying to win. It certainly won't be helped by those two numpties having a go in the dugouts.
Like I said though, what do I know, I was never into football.
Glad of it.
Saying that, I did win the first sweepstake based on the first player to score so the 95 minutes was not a complete waste of television time. £5 I won. Kenny, you owe me a pound.