Martin O’Neill’s comments were an ugly blemish on the so-called beautiful game

WHEN our national soccer manager Martin O’Neill was asked if the partners of players would accompany the team to Euro 2016, this is what he said: “Well, it depends on how good looking the girls are. If they are really attractive, they’re very, very welcome. The uglier ones, I’m afraid not.”

He delivered this line in a kind of deadpan JackDee-wannabe tone. Dead down the pan more like. Are you on drugs, Martin?

Some kind of retroviral banned substance that transports your brain back to a bygone age of blackface and mother-in-law jokes? And tell us — what is ugly? How do you define ugly? Did your two adult daughters — ‘girls’ — fall off their chairs at your hilarious aside, or did their stomachs shrivel and cringe?