Just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse, what with COVID-19 and all its associated palavers, the Sports Diary has returned after a few months of being incubated in a petri dish under laboratory conditions.
Upon its initial demise, one loyal reader lamented the passing of the diary’s “pawky and irreverent comment.”
Most folk, though, delivered a relieved, nonchalant shrug at the expiration of its “pointless and incomprehensible waffle.” And that was just the sports editor.
Like a newco formed from the ashes of a crumbled wreck, however, the diary is back and what a time it is to be alive. Well, kind of.
Poor old Rangers are in a heck of a fankle and continue to display the kind of ghoulish, split personality that would make Jekyll & Hyde look like Siegfried & Roy.
It’s clear that their domestic form remains in self-isolation in the Dubai hotel where they spent the winter break and their calamitous collapse has just about had the Civil Aviation Authority switching its focus from beleaguered Flybe to affairs at Ibrox.
After the Scottish Cup defeat to Hearts last Saturday, the meek surrender to Hamilton the other night left an already downbeat Steven Gerrard sporting the kind of glum countenance that resembled Les Dawson peering at a disappointing bank statement.
Morale is now so low in the dressing room even Alfredo Morelos has lost faith in his own diving.
The unrelenting march of the coronavirus has caused widespread panic. But not as much as the anxiety caused by Connor Goldson trying to dribble in his own box.
By all hysterical accounts, we’re heading for some kind of grisly zombie apocalypse which, in Glasgow at least, is just a routine series of events after an Old Firm game.
As the menace of the corona thingamejig grows by the day, various Governments, health authorities and sporting officials have been sending out more statements than Jim Traynor.
Apparently, we can all do our bit for the war effort by washing our hands for 20 seconds. Rangers, of course, have been extremely pro-active on that particular front with numerous players washing their hands of any responsibility on the pitch for 90 minutes ...
*IF THE OLD FIRM WERE GOLFERS?
An utterly pointless Tweet highlighting the difference between Celtic and Rangers on the domestic front right now ...
The only thing to fear is fear itself. And gators.#TOURVault pic.twitter.com/URqIOJbdK3
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) March 3, 2020
*Today, March 6, is the 66th birthday of the notorious German goalkeeper Harald Schumacher.
The diarist always had a strange fascination with classy, continental custodians who were kicking about in the late 1970s and into the 80s. Schumacher, Jean-Marie Pfaff, Ole Qvist, Peter Disztl, Joel Bats?
They were all fine stoppers while most of them possessed that raw, manly prowess and sweaty hirsuteness which almost begged the rather disturbing question, “crikey, did he no’ play the plumber in that moderately steamy movie that was on after Sportscene?” It was a bit of a change from the peely-wally, gap-toothed cragginess of Jim Leighton.
Of course, Schumacher was infamous for his grim clattering of France’s Patrick Battiston during that epic World Cup semi-final in 1982.
It was labelled as “one of the most brutal acts committed on a football pitch.” Well, it was until Bob Malcolm once attempted a crossfield pass with the outside of his boot.
*"Stand there, you fat pig! This is where I told you to stand. Do it how I told you!" It sounds like the enraged spoutings of the diarist’s pilates instructor to be honest. It is, in fact, the seething splutterings of the France rugby coach, Fabien Galthie.
His withering volleys and pugnacious pelters on the training ground may be an unorthodox approach but it’s getting results with Les Bleus still on course for the Six Nations grand slam.
Scotsman Johnnie Beattie played under Galthie at Montpellier and said: “A lot of people had their confidence destroyed.” The diarist wonders if Galthie has been knocking about Ibrox recently?
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