TOMASZEWSKI-Y

If you've read 'The Crimes of Miss Jane Goldie' there are bits of it that are actually true. (It's fairly obvious which bits aren't!) It used to rile me to hell when I got a class that had been taught previously by some clown, or clowns, who hadn't a bloody clue what they were doing. When I was at school they would teach the whole class at the same time, working through the curriculum for each stage. By the time we got to Primary 7 there were some poor bastards that were still trying to figure out what had been going on in P1. By the time I was a teacher things had changed for the better. Now you worked at levels from A to E and you didn't move onto the next level until you understood and passed the test for the previous one. This meant that every pupil was learning at their own pace. 

The spanner in the works, though, was the teachers that hadn't the first idea about what they were supposed to be teaching. I felt as if I was constantly battling about the ignorance of the pupils passed onto me. It wasn't just things like learning that 'walking' and 'swimming' were verbs, it was that they were taught that if you used a capital letter and a full stop then that constituted a sentence. So. If a child. Wrote like. This. It was marked. That he was able. To write. A proper sentence. You can see why I was so pissed off. Once a child learns something from a teacher it's a hard slog to try to convince him that what he has learned is wrong without telling him that his previous teacher is a moron. Unfortunately, you're not allowed to cast aspersions on the intelligence of your colleagues in front of the children. Also unfortunately, the teacher in question's old man was a high-heid-yin in the council so my complaints fell on deaf ears.

Anyway, the only way you can teach children properly is if everybody knows the rules of grammar, spelling, maths etcetera. If somebody tells them that you can put the full stop anywhere you like then they haven't learned the proper rules. Rules are there for a reason. If they weren't there then nobody would know where they were or what the hell they were doing. And it's not just in school; we need rules in society, in work and even in sport. 

A couple of hundred years ago a game of football was the 'Uppies' versus the 'Doonies' and everything went, including kicking the utter shit out of your opponents. Games went on for days and players would come and go as they saw fit while some would be forced to withdraw due to broken heads and gouged eyes. It was practically all-out war and the authorities did all they could to ban the games.

In the Nineteenth Century, when nice, middle-class gentlemen were looking for sports to inflict on their children at their public schools, football as we know it came about. Of course, you couldn't have teams full of thugs kicking lumps out of each other (that came later when they invented rugby) so rules and regulations were drawn up. These became the basis for the rules of Association Football used internationally. It was vital that everyone played to the same rules otherwise competitions would be meaningless. Sometimes the rules change and sometimes the punishment inflicted for breaking the rules is changed. It's the same as the laws of the land. Fifty years ago you'd be banged up in the clink for being gay; nowadays they'll shove you into the Big Brother house! As long as everybody follows the rules and knows where they stand then it's all above board.

And so we come to the present day and the shameful behaviour of Legia Warsaw. The punishment for fielding an ineligible player used to be different but now it's the match being awarded to the offending team's opponent as a 3-0 victory. Every club in Europe would be made aware of this and it is up to each individual club to ensure that it complies with the rules. Legia broke the rules, even though their own player warned them, and so they have been given the appropriate punishment, which was clearly set out in UEFA's rule book. There's no point in them moaning about precedent and pointing to previous punishments; that was then and this is now. It's like me appealing a £1000 fine for not having a TV licence by pointing out that my granny was only fined ten bob in Nineteen-Canteen for not having a licence for her wireless!

This situation was not of Celtic's making and no blame whatsoever can be attached to the players, staff, management or directors of Celtic. That, however, hasn't stopped Legia brazenly trying to attack Celtic, with full encouragement from The Peeppul. Now we've got Jan Tomaszewski calling for all of Europe to brand Celtic as 'cheats' and to boo them at every stadium. This cowardly attempt at bullying is hardly going to help their case, is it? Not one of these clowns from Poland has attacked UEFA, and yet it's UEFA that kicked them out, not Celtic. He calls this "the biggest scandal in the history of sport." Really? He needs to get out more or at least look at what a certain Govan outfit has been allowed to get away with! Maybe having once played for Rangers is what has convinced Legia's manager that the rules shouldn't apply to his team!

I was laughing the other day at Barry Ferguson's appeal for calm in the Daily Record. I wasn't laughing, however, at his ridiculous praise for Sooperally. It was the names I was laughing at: 'Coisty' and 'Durranty'. As I remember it, we all grew out of that by the time we were in Fourth Year at high school. It was well before our sixteenth birthdays that we started calling each other by our Christian names, feeling that the likes of 'Welshy' etc was a bit childish. What age is 'Fergy'? His mental age obviously lags way behind. 

And I notice that the referees' work-to-rule is still in operation. Not one red card or penalty was handed out last night and Bisto FC had to rely on sheer luck to win. Christ, even fat 'Boydy' was flagged for offside! Now that's something I've never heard of before. If flags had been waved properly during his previous career at Ibrox there is no way in hell that he'd have got anywhere near the tally he amassed as the 'SPL's Top Scorer'!

Have you seen the new heading on 'Murdo-y's' website? He's got Don Corleone next to the puppet strings that feature in the opening titles, and on the book cover, of The Godfather. Of course, it's because everything: the SFA, the SPFL, the Scottish Parliament, Westminster, HMRC, NATO, NASA, the UN, the Galactic Federation and even God himself, is being manipulated by Peter Lawwell with just one purpose in mind: to destroy Rangers (sic). That'll be why Campbell Ogilvie EBT is still clinging onto his position, eh?

Onto his blog proper and he decides to have a go at the "stuffed shirts and control freaks" that are apparently ruining the game of football. He says that their "desire to make sure everyone lives by the rule book has stifled creativity and ruined many a career." I wonder what he means by that. On the contrary, it's Scottish referees and their reluctance to enforce the rules that stifle creativity, when the lunks that Rangers always employed would stop a creative player by the judicious application of a studded boot. And whose career has been 'ruined' by the rule book? I certainly can't think of anyone.

Isn't it strange how we never heard them squealing about "stuffed shirts and control freaks" when Jim Farry was weilding his pen in Rangers' favour or when Sandy Bryson got them out of jail during the Nimmo-Smith inquiry? Of course, now that a decision has gone in favour of Celtic then it's all 'corruption' and 'favouritism'. One of McMurdo's disciples even says that UEFA "have the best interests of their ‘own’ at heart". What does he mean by that, do you think? Why, of course, Platini and all the heid-bummers at UEFA are Kafflicks and it's all a big Kafflick Konspiracy! The fact that Poland is a mostly Catholic country and that the majority, if not all, of the players, management etc. of Legia are probably Catholics has probably escaped the notice of this particular clown.

So what's the answer to all this 'corruption'? That's easy, according to one of the disciples:

"I would add for those of us that want to see it change, we should not hold our breath, in sport it will take at least a decade or more for change to happen. For it to happen with politics in this country it will take the whole of the Protestant Unionist Community and those that lean that way morally to stand up and vote conservatives at council and national levels, just like they all did before !"

So there you have it. The 'Protestant Unionist Community' (ie Orangemen) need to rise up and vote Conservative! I mean, what the hell planet do these folk live on? What the rest of us (ie Normal People) need to do is rise up and vote for independence and get rid of this shower once and for all.

I'll let McMurdo have the last word. No, make that the second-last word: 

"It’s the surrounding stuff that stinks more and more – the boardroom battles, the unjust rulings, the distasteful scrabble for money, the racism, bigotry and violence in the stands, the backhanders and the really annoying pundits."

Boardroom battles - Ibrox

Unjust rulings - The new Ibrox outfit allowed into the league and to call itself 'Rangers'.

Distasteful scrabble for money - Graham Wallace begging for gingies down in London.

Racism, bigotry and violence - Pretty much synonymous with the Ibrox support.

Backhanders - Three letters: E, B and T.

Really annoying pundits - Jabba, Jackson, Neil McCann etc etc etc.

It looks as if, going by McMurdo's definitions at any rate, corruption in the game could easily be eliminated by the simple expedient of one team disappearing!

P.S. No doubt McMurdo would call me a 'stuffed shirt and control freak' for my stance when I was a teacher. Maybe you think I was being pedantic as well. Here's a wee test for you: what is the verb in this sentence? 

'Walking is good for you.'

 

 

"Hello, Peter. Yes, everything's all lined up. We're going to be invading Govan any time now. We're going to wipe Ibrox and its team off the face of the map!"

Oops! Nearly forgot. Clash of the Agnivores is only 99p on Kindle for the next five days!