One for the birds

READERS who think that there is nothing of significance to be gleaned from the sports pages will be pleasantly surprised to learn today that your correspondent has come up with an ingenious solution to the problem of bird flu.

To be avoided at all costs, surely, is the distressing scenario whereby we might have to cull our feathered friends in huge and indiscriminate numbers, especially if it means that we will be deprived of the chance to sit down to a nice chicken curry afterwards.

My proposal: kill only the male of the species. The logic is obvious: while male birds will obviously succumb to the full-blown flu, female birds will merely report a slight head cold. QED.

Needless to say, I was inspired to bend my mind in this direction by the timely example of the inimitable Jose Mourinho, a man who knows there are more important and worrying things than a supposedly hazardous trip to the Reebok.

Recalling Eric’s deathless riff about seagulls, sardines and trawlers, the Special One this week made a bold early bid for quote of the century when deflecting questions about the pressure involved in keeping Chelsea at the top of the Premiership.

“I am feeling a lot of pressure with this swan in Scotland,” Mourinho explained. “I am serious - to me, pressure is bird flu. You are laughing but I am serious. I am more scared of the swan than football. What is football compared to life? A swan with bird flu: that is the drama of the last two days. I will have to buy some masks.”

Is it just me or does Steve Staunton sometimes seem a wee bit dull? This was also the week when UEFA did their bit to mark the 1916 Easter Rising commemoration by appearing to give the green - er, sorry, the blue - light to that little ditty beloved of Glasgow Rangers supporters, The Billy Boys.

UEFA reportedly “scrutinised” the lyrics of the song after the Champions’ League games against Villarreal and opted to clear Rangers of the charge of sectarian chanting because of Scotland’s “social and historical background.”

The organisation’s Control and Disciplinary body concluded: “Supporters have been singing the song for years, during national and international matches, without either the Scottish football or governmental authorities being able to intervene. The result is that this song is now somehow tolerated.”

For those who don’t know, The Billy Boys, an old Glasgow loyalist street gang song, sung to the tune of Marching Through Georgia, goes as follows: “Hullo, hullo/We are the Billy Boys/ Hullo, hullo/You’ll know us by our noise/We’re up to our knees in Fenian blood/Surrender or you’ll die/For we are the Bridgeton Billy Boys.”

This is the definitive version, often amended to suit local circumstances, and revisiting it via the miracle of Google came as something of a surprise to yours truly, since, through repeated exposure to the song over the years, I had been left with the impression that the boys were up to their necks, not their knees, in Fenian blood.

Is this a sign of progress, then, a further dividend of the peace process, or just another example of the kind of misinterpretation of Glasgow dialect which, for many years in my youth, had me labouring under the illusion that there was a team called Patrick Thistle? (A bit like Billy Connolly, who says he grew up thinking they were called Partick Thistle Nil).

Whatever, it’s Billy Boys 1 Uefa 0, though the result might have been different if the Rangers fans had given voice to some other old favourites, like ‘Could you go a chicken curry, Bobby Sands’.

And given that something less than 100% of all Celtic anthems are dedicated to the concepts of peace and love, maybe it’s just as well that they got knocked out of Europe.

Meanwhile, hold the front page, there’s suddenly stiff competition for Jose Mourinho in the Quote of the Century stakes. And it comes from, er, Jose Mourinho. Here he is on the title run-in, the Grand National and the dangers of cardiac arrest. I think.

“I know the history. But I tell you a Portuguese story, because in Portugal there are no Devon Lochs and no horses. We’re in the sea, in a boat one mile from the beach. I jump because I am a good swimmer, and this fellow wants to chase me to the beach. I go, using lots of different swimming styles. I come to the beach and walk on the beach. He comes to the beach, he dies. He shouldn’t chase me! He should say to the boat, ‘Please take me a little bit closer’. He is so enthusiastic chasing me, but has a heart attack. We call it ‘Dying On The Beach’.”

Is it just me or does Samuel Beckett sometimes seem a wee bit dull?