FAI’s waiting game to replace Trap

You find this column in a holding pattern today which, as anyone who has ever experienced the same situation in the sky above Heathrow will know it could mean a landing any time between now and Christmas.

Ten days on from Giovanni Trapattoni’s take off at Dublin Airport, we find ourselves in the footballing equivalent of Limbo, if that term has any meaning anymore outside of computer games and exotic dancing. Come to think of it, I’m not sure I can even remember the correct meaning myself: was Limbo the one you could never get out of and Purgatory the one where you had to serve your time before moving on to the Promised Land or was it the other way around? I’m pretty sure I knew all this back in the days when a green catechism was an essential part of the school curriculum but, if any confirmation were needed that a lot of water has passed under the bridge since then, it arrived this week with the startling news that David McCallum aka Illya Kuryakin – one of the men from UNCLE – turned 80.

Ye gods!