Only reason beer is back on agenda is to appease UEFA .. it won’t enhance match days for the fans

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St Mirren have the same, Killie and Dunfermline have had them for years.

And then, of course, there is the hospitality.

Sitting in the car park at Celtic Park last weekend trying to finish my work after a fire alarm had seen us evacuated, I get this thud on the window from a guy, absolutely bladdered, offering me 30 quid to take him and his mates to Central Station.

He was legless. If he’d tried to walk through a turnstile in that nick, he’d have been turned away. But because he was in a suit, he was fine.

So the argument isn’t so much about whether it should be allowed, it’s whether it should be discriminatory against people not prepared or not able to shell out £100 for the privilege. It’s about choice.

About the majority fans not being treated as pariahs because of the Neanderthals of 40 years ago, most of whom will now be either in their dotage or dead.

Their children and grandchildren are now paying the price for a piece of legislation brought in, rightly at the time, to get football on an even keel. To rid it of the ‘cairy-oot’-fuelled excesses which blighted the landscape.

And no, our national sport’s culture still isn’t perfect. There’s still be a fair share of complete throbbers to whom we shouldn’t be selling that fuel.

But the biggest mistake of the lot that we’re making – and it’s always the same – is that the motivation for doing this stinks to high heaven. As usual.

Anyone looking to truly introduce this as a fan-friendly gesture should be doing at as a piece of thinking to improve everything about the matchday experience. It should be one of 100 things that could be done better, part of a wellresearched and non-partisan piece of research which asked the biggest contributors to the coffers of Scottish football – the fans – what they want, and how they can help us.

Is that why we’re having the conversation now, though? Aye right.

We’re having it because of the 13 centres being used for Euro 2020, Hampden will be the only one where fans of the four nations calling it home for the week won’t be able to buy a beer on the concourse.

Suddenly because it’s UEFA, it’s back on the agenda.

So while the end may justify the means, just remember who they’re serving. And think about what it is we’re actually talking about. What clubs currently offer fans once they’re over the threshold is, with a few exceptions, overpriced garbage. Wha t mak e s people think them selling beer from a t ap in their pie gantry is going to suddenly turn it artisanal? It’ll be a fiver a pint, in a plastic tumbler, three per cent max, you’ll be drinking it in a cold concrete box, and you’ll irritate everyone around you when your bladder won’t hold out without you shuffling off to the lavvies as soon as you’re back in your spot for the second half.

Still, loads arrive at the game with four or five already inside them anyway. At least in this instance, it can be controlled. Presumably police and licensing authorities would demand you hand over your match day stub or season ticket and get a pint or two, tops.

As always, though, there should be more vision attached to this. More community input, more local business collaboration, more food options attached, more commercial advice, more consideration.

And as aways, there will be none of it because our authorities think in one dimension.

We should be happy the debate has re- opened into whether fans deserve better but spare us the sanctimony on either side and actually ask fans what they need. Then find a way to improve their lot. Not because UEFA asked you to, but because the supporters have. What was John Fleming thinking, responding to a letter from Dundee’s fans’ association which howled at the moon about Steven McLean’s fitness to referee based on who his dad played for and with 40 years ago? If he thought he’d be damned if he didn’t, he was wrong. Some views deserve respect. Others, like this, are the reason the shredder was invented.