THE MONSTER MASH

I wonder if Jordan Rhodes will be taking the field on Friday evening. You know Jordan Rhodes, the striker for Scotland, who is as Scottish as jellied eels, Yorkshire pudding and Eccles cake. He qualifies to play for Scotland because he attended primary school here while his dad played for Scottish clubs. Under such ridiculous rules can a player be entitled to turn out for a country that is not of his birth. I wonder what Gordon McQueen has to say about it?

It used to be that you played for the country you were born in and that was it. The rules were relaxed in the 1970s and, with one or two short periods of strictness, they have been relaxed to the point of not particularly mattering much anymore. Remember Jack Charlton, scouring the planet for anybody that had ever tasted Guinness to star in his ROI team? And then we had, a few years ago, some stupid story about Nacho Novo somehow being eligible to play for Scotland. I remember one joker in the pub suggesting that the Scotland manager should start looking at African players. The argument could be used that the player's ancestors were cannibals, who had eaten Scottish missionaries, so the guy had Scottish blood in him! Ridiculous, I know, but I'm surprised somebody hasn't tried it!

Still, if the rules say that something's okay then everybody has to go along with it. It seems, however, in Scotland that it's only okay so long as you don't sign up to play for one particular nation. Paul Paton is a native of Paisley, who opted to play for Northern Ireland since his dad came from Larne. Good luck to him, although he might end up behind bars for a certain incident in the west-end of Glasgow. Now, I wonder; if Scotland were playing against NI, would the two Gordons, Strachan and McQueen, be calling on the Scotland fans to boo Paton throughout the match? Where have they gone? Gordon? Gordon?

One last word on the poppy brouhaha. We should count ourselves fortunate that all those men gave their lives for us. Just imagine, if Germany had won either war we would be living in a society where we would be forced into glorifying the armed services, wearing symbols to prove our allegiance and listening to constant rhetoric about how wonderful it is to die for your country. Wait a minute...

Meanwhile, The Peeppul are getting all excited at events taking place at Skaro. It seems that Mike Ashley has handed back the naming rights that he bought for a pound. This has been accepted all round as great news. They never learn, do they? I would imagine that if Ashley has handed this back then it means that there's no money to be made from it. That, surely, doesn't augur well! He obviously doesn't expect any great advertising prospect to emerge from renaming the stadium, which means either he reckons the club is going nowhere or he reckons the club is going nowhere!

While the likes of McMurdo is shooting his load all over the place about a real, bona fide billionaire being in place, they're obviously not looking at things closely enough. They don't think about things like Ashley not buying into the share issue but buying shares from somebody else. Effectively this means that he hasn't put a penny into the club. And it looks like he has no intention of doing so either. He loaned them £2m and is now lending them another £1m. It won't take long for him to be the major creditor; what will happen then? I doubt there'll be any kind of warchest for Sooper come January; unless, of course the board decides to borrow more from Ashley! Never mind, maybe they can give Sooper some of the billions upon billions they're bound to get for Lee Ashley.

The Union of Fuckwits are still on the case, complaining to the AIM about Ashley. They're banging on about his merchandising deals etc. What the hell do they expect the Stock Market to do about it all? He bought shares, legally, hasn't done anything without informing the market and...well, that's it as far as the Stock Exchange is concerned. They couldn't give a damn about anything else! And I see Graeme Souness has stuck his big beak in as well, cursing all and sundry because they dared to turn down an offer he was involved in. I like seeing pictures of Souness; it alwas reminds me of his torn face as he stormed into the tunnel as Blackburn Rovers, 'the men', had just been beaten by 'the boys' of Celtic!

Finally, I see Mike Ashley's investment company is called MASH, and they keep going on about MASH on McMurdo's blog. Maybe it's an omen. The theme song from the film, MASH will make an appropriate background score when it all goes tits-up!

"Hello, playmates! It's your old pal, Big-Hearted Bill Struth again. Now what's all this I hear about folk going to boo a couple of lads that are playing for the Republic of Ireland. What the hell is the world coming to? In my day we'd have shot the whole bloody team! Remembrance Day? What I remember is V.E. Day, when somebody came into the shipyard to tell us it was safe to come out. We were only just out the gates when we heard we were still fighting against the bloomin' Japanese! I almost got knocked over in the rush back into the sheet-iron shop, I can tell you! Ayyyyyyythenkyaow!"