OUR GAME HAS FINALLY GONE M.A.D.
If loopy leaders Donald and Kim want to get into football then Scotland would be a match made in heaven. Here, sports scribes are being filmed at conferences in a sinister bid to intimidate. It won’t work ...
IT’S still not too late to save humanity.
Just because Donald Trump has a stubby, stunted finger hovering over a fat red button, it doesn’t necessarily follow that the end has to be nigh for the rest of us.
Nor for that matter must we accept as inevitable the thermonuclear destruction of the planet just because in the similarly absurd Kim Jong-un, Trump is pitting his peroxide steeped wits against a nemesis who displays even less of a grip on reality than the moron in the White House and his candy floss wig.
Meanwhile, the rest of us are left to watch this ludicrous double act threaten our own existence and to wonder how on earth we allowed ourselves to get to such place, where the lunatics are not only in charge of the asylum but ready to blow it to smithereens.
So we distract ourselves for as long as possible in whichever way we can.
The hopeless pessimists drink to forget as if there really is no tomorrow. The hopeless optimists go to the gym while, in their sweaty folly, refusing to acknowledge the possibility that there might not be.
And some of us go to the football. Well, those of us who have not yet been banned from doing so.
And it’s only then that the thought occurs. Perhaps Trump and Kim have missed their true vocation.
Maybe they belong right here in the madhouse of Scottish football. Perhaps they would take one look at what goes on in this country’s top flight – and some of the characters who thrive in this environment – and realise that their own narcissistic tendencies are strictly second division by comparison.
Yes, Trump might sit on a toilet seat made of 24-carat gold, plotting the end of civilisation as the world falls out of his bottom.
True, Kim may be aiming his entire arsenal at all points from Guam to Guantanamo Bay while not being sure if they will clear the fence at the end of his own back garden.
But they wouldn’t know Armageddon if it smashed them in the face. Isn’t that right, Mr Regan?
Because less than a fortnight into a new season and our own lot have unleashed the kind of chaos that would make Trump and Kim blush and plead for a moment of calm reflection.
In the space of just 10 days we’ve already had a flurry of red cards, six on Saturday alone and one of which was handed out after Kirk Broadfoot tugged on a rival striker’s top knot.
We’ve had all manner of managerial spats including the likes of Jon Daly, Brendan Rodgers, Derek McInnes and Martin Canning – as well as Saturday’s rammy between Pedro Caixinha and Neil Lennon which saw the Hibs boss being reported to the police.
One manager has been sacked already, while one club’s chairman has been the subject of an alleged assault.
Among all this anger and bad blood, we’ve had calls for this newspaper to be boycotted by a group of Rangers fans, which is precisely the sort of thing Trump would have endorsed.
And, not unrelated, there have been some other highly curious goings on concerning the media at Murray Park, where Rangers have started training their own cameras on the press men who are despatched there to ask questions of manager Caixinha on behalf of their respective readerships.
There is a sinister subtext to all of this. Ask anything too difficult and the club reserves the right to put it up online in order that the support can act as judge and jury.
Again, this sort of intimidatory tactic will be right up Jong-un’s street but it does not reflect well at all on those who are making decisions on Rangers behalf.
It resulted in a mass walk-out of football writers from Caixinha’s pre-match briefing ahead of Saturday’s visit from Hibs and it will most likely happen all over again when the media are “welcomed” back to preview this weekend’s lip-smacker of a match-up with Hearts.
As if Rangers – and Caixinha – don’t have enough on their collective plate without going out of their way to look for fights because already this next league encounter looks very much like a must-win for a manager who has never been too far from the firing line.
If there are people around him who are pressing his buttons and abusing their own positions in the process then he should be smart enough to identify them and to keep a safe distance.
Because right now Caixinha