The "Fiver's" view...

UP TO THEIR KNEES IN RUSSIAN BLOOD Are you a straight man (or the butch half of a Sapphic couple)? Areyou familiar with that movie about Carrie Bradshaw and her neurotic,shoe-obsessed harridan chums that premiered in London the othernight? If so, multiply your complete lack of interest in escortingthe wife or girlfriend to watch this giant gobbling turkey by 10,000and that's how much the Fiver is looking forward to sitting throughtonight's Euro Vase final. Why? Well, look at the teams who are playing. One's an ultra-defensivecounter-attacking side that hails from a bleak European outpost ...and so is the other one. Now look at the fans. Obviously it would bea cheap shot to label them all bigots, because anyone who has everheard 45,000 knuckleheads singing No Surrender or Big Jock Knew knowsthe Neanderthals among the Pope's O'Rangers support are in aminority. As are the many thousands of Zenit St Petersburg fans whomake monkey noises whenever they encounter a black player. But even if the Fiver has made plans to wash its de-louse its hairtonight, that doesn't mean everyone is eager to avoid what promisesto be the most boring encounter since Bruce Willis's Black & Deckercame up against an asteroid the size of Texas in Armageddon. "In afinal you obviously have to go and win the game so we might approachthis a little differently," och-ayed O'Rangers manager Walter Smith,hinting that he might opt for a more swashbuckling 8-2-0 formation,instead of the 9-1-0 that has served him so well to date. Meanwhile the good wishes for O'Rangers have been trickling in fromthe usual bandwagon-jumpers. "I want to send to Walter Smith and thewhole [O'Rangers] team my best wishes," declared Pope Bened ...sorry, prime minister Gordon Brown, pausing to do that funnyintake-of-breath thing with his mouth. "It has been an incredibleachievement only losing two goals in the knock-out phase of thetournament." Losing two goals ... scoring five ... in eight matches.Incredible isn't the word.

Posted By: shoddy, May 14, 18:10:40