A jumped-up UEFA exec tells us we can’t sing our anthem? Dream on!

It made me equally sad and angry that a handful of people showed disrespect during the minute’s silence at a couple of games this week.

the bottom line is that someone has died. a family are in mourning. It happens to be our Queen. my Queen. a woman who has given 70 years of selfless service. the supreme example of what it is to be a public servant.

I make no claim to be a historian but I say without the remotest doubt we are talking about the greatest woman to have lived within our shores and arguably the greatest Briton ever. You talk about the likes of Winston Churchill, who served this country so well. But this woman has served her country for 70 years. Faultlessly, in everything she did.

For some mindless fools to protest in the manner they did was an embarrassment to themselves, an embarrassment to their football clubs and an act of utter classlessness.

the word ‘respect’ is not even in the vocabulary of these people. thank God they were a small minority and the sport we love has shown the appreciation many millions feel for a monarch who was also a patron of england’s Fa.

If you are talking about the other end of the scale — and well beyond it — look at the way my old club, Glasgow Rangers, paid their own tribute on Wednesday night. the coordination and detail which

went into the creation of the Queen’s silhouette against a Union flag, covering the Broomloan Stand, was magnificent.

there was also the playing of the national anthem, despite that utterly ridiculous order from UeFa that they should not.

the home supporters at Ibrox were always going to sing the anthem and never going to comply with some faceless bureaucrat sitting in Nyon. dream on if you think that order was going to be adhered to. Some jumped-up

UeFa executive thinks they can tell us we can’t sing our national anthem after our Queen of 70 years dies. It was never going to happen. Not play the anthem? Hold on a minute. this is merely football we’re talking about. Our monarch passes away and some minion at UeFa tells us what we can and can’t do. I don’t know who on earth came up with that decision.

the need for appropriate respect and a sense of perspective also made it 100 per cent right that football matches were cancelled at all levels last weekend. I saw cricket being praised to the rafters for carrying on, barely 24 hours after the death of our Queen, but no sport should have taken place.

the fact they’d started the test series against South africa is immaterial. this is sport. a game of cricket. a game of football. It means nothing, simply nothing in the great sweep of our national history. at this moment, no mark of respect can be too great.

this will be a weekend of reflection for me. I’m doing the charity Kiltwalk tomorrow in edinburgh, my home city, which bade the Queen a final farewell in such an unforgettable way this week. my son James and I will be walking 21 miles in aid of the charity deBRa, which predominantly helps children. the charity, of which I’m a vice president, does so much wonderful work.

and as soon as I’ve finished there, I’ll be travelling to the airport to get a flight south and back home to dorset, before travelling up to London for the funeral.

If I can get 100 yards away, 200 yards away, then I’ll be there. I was born a month before her coronation. to me, this feels such a significant moment.

Football is starting up again. the controversies, dramas and skills we all love are already a part of our lives once more.

a few days without that, remembering there is a bigger picture and a world beyond our sport, hurt nobody — even though some could not find the common decency to display basic respect.

IT’S the less obvious things that tell me Erling Haaland is a very special player. His goal celebrations, for instance. For many players it’s a ‘me, me, me’ celebration these days, running to the crowd and kissing the badge. This isn’t Haaland’s way. He celebrates with his team-mates and compliments them, too. That shows me a maturity which is way beyond his 22 years.

‘Cricket should not have taken place. Sport means nothing in the great sweep of our national history’