Yobs in dock over McGuinness chant
ENGLAND football fans’ moronic behaviour in Germany included singing an obscene song mocking the Pope, as well as Stormont deputy first minister and former IRA commander Martin McGuinness on the day he died.
Footage of the chanting in a packed Dortmund pub has been posted on YouTube, which should make it easier for the authorities to identify culprits and take the necessary action.
The incessant chant went: ‘Martin McGuinness, he died this morning, The England boys are off to Dortmund, Celebrating the only way, **** the Pope and the IRA.’
The anti- social conduct continued during the game, when the amount of beer thrown by England fans from the upper tiers on to their compatriots below is said to have made the lower stand look like it had been flooded.
Mark Roberts, UK football policing unit chief, said: ‘We will review all the footage and identify those we can. We are the only country who takes retrospective action.’ THE rugby press will soon discover whether the pen is mightier than the pound at Twickenham. The RFU are relocating the press box because of their £60million East Stand refurbishment to centralise their corporate hospitality, and expensive debenture seat requirements are complicating where the media will be positioned. TONY COTON (right), Aston Villa’s chief scout, is writing a book to be published in September that is expected to lift the lid on one of English football’s great hell-raising sides — the Birmingham City team managed by Ron Saunders in the early 1980s. The frightening collection of hard men on and off the field included Mick Harford, Mark Dennis, Noel Blake, Pat van den Hauwe, Robert Hopkins, Howard Gayle and goalkeeper Coton. NUMEROUS rugby clubs who stage dinners, mainly in aid of charity, in the build-up to the Lions tour are being targeted by the team’s lawyers in an attempt to prevent unofficial use of the Lions name. Cambridge University, who have provided more Lions — 73 — than any other club, have had to change their traditional evening with the Cambridge University Lions to the ‘Big Cats’ when promoting their dinner on April 26. One of the special ‘Big Cat’ guests taking part in a Q&A is John Spencer, the team’s tour manager in New Zealand this summer. A Lions spokesman said the brand is all they have until the team gather every four years — and that they have a duty to protect sponsors and their four official charity dinners.