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?

Martin, you’re 64, and resemble nothing more than a harried geography teacher. Great that you got Ireland through, don’t get me wrong, but that doesn’t make you Pep Guardiola.

Football is THE beautiful game, but still played and managed by elements of extraordinary ugliness. From Sepp Blatter to Adam Johnson, it couldn’t get much uglier. Johnson, your former purchase, was still playing for Sunderland, your former club, until just before his conviction for sexual activity with a child. Nice.

The female partners of male footballers are referred to as Wags, as though they are a variety of ducks or dogfood. There are no male partners of male players because in the whole of international football there are no gay men.

Not one. Apart from Justin Fashanu, but let’s not go there. Women play football too, but they are probably all lesbians anyway, because why else would they actually want to kick a ball around instead of being ‘attractive’ and ‘good looking’ on the sidelines, clapping decoratively?

Don’t get me wrong, Martin, I love football. I love being in the midst of the singing shouting swearing crowd at a match. The tribal energy of it. So gloriously rude, unlike rugby.

And football continues to evolve — just look at the Bundesliga, teams like Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund with their giant ‘Refugees Welcome’ banners.

Your former club Aston Villa was the first in the UK to express the same sentiment. Humanity and respect.

So when a manager of a national team such as yourself comes out with jaded sexist crap at a press conference, it sets football back. What might be a pathetic attempt at humour just adds another thick little brick to the wall of stupid that football still badly needs to dismantle.

Football has power, Martin, as you well know. Harness that power towards inclusivity. Women are people. Gays are people. Football seems to have finally got the racism memo, in northern Europe at least, but when it comes to misogyny and homophobia it’s still ugly, ugly, ugly.