EVEN here in Paris, I can't help thinking about Dick Campbell in his Maryhill garret (maybe you should get out more - Ed). The Partick Thistle manager pulled off one of the great escapes this week in hauling his club out of the second division, though garrulous Dick, I remain convinced, is still doomed.
Many Thistle fans, let it be said, take a dim view of the cloth cap-wearing Campbell and his teeth-gnashing antics. Sitting as a paying punter in the Jackie Husband stand at Firhill recently for a ThistleStranraer match - don't ask - I don't think I'd heard such abuse and venom being flung at a manager by supporters.
(Actually, that's a blatant lie. The angriest pews I've ever come across in football were those splintery benches in that hovel which once passed for the main stand at Broomfield Park. Some of Lanarkshire's darkest, most fearsome characters used to congregate in there).
Apart from his drill-sergeant demeanour, Campbell has a verbal style which I have always found slightly dizzying. Gnashing his teeth in careful consideration of his next sentence while he was assistant manager at Dunfermline, I used to come away from Dick's post-match press conferences with my notepad full of goobledygook.
At Peterhead last Sunday, following Thistle's miraculous escape, I note Dick was at it again. "Wur form's been up and doon like the proverbial whoor's knickers, " he told all-ears reporters.
One other thing about Campbell has also been intriguing me. Recently, he has taken to bleating over a suspicion that some other managers in the game have been after his job at Thistle . . . other managers, Dick suspects, who quite fancy the more bohemian, enjoyably hallucinatory lifestyle at the helm of the Maryhill Magyars.
D'you know, I think he might be right. Certainly, I can think of at least one faintly tubby character who, when he's not warbling on TV, wouldn't mind swapping his plough in the south-west farmlands for the more sexy Maryhill beat.
Take my advice, Dick . . . watch out for your cap.
Juve got to be kidding, Franco
A PARTICULAR joy of mine this week has been watching the awful mess that my old chum, Franco Carraro, head of the Italian Football Federation, has found himself in.
As corruption continues to engulf Italian football, the perenially-animated and preposterous Carraro was forced to clean his desk and resign in high dudgeon last weekend. Carraro is one of a number of figures in Italian football - including Luciano Moggi, the general manager of Juventus - who have been forced by investigating magistrates to step down from their posts as fraud and corruption have once more been found to be sweeping the Italian game.
Moggi, it now transpires after the release of taped telephone conversations, is accused of having spent the past 18 months lining up compliant, patsy referees to take charge of Juventus matches in Serie A. And the barking Carraro, prosecutors suspect, has been complicit in the whole affair.
I must say, given my past experience of Carraro, I spent half of Monday hooting myself at this turn of events.
May I just remind readers that, on the night of June 18, 2002, I stayed up half the night in erstwhile unknown town of Daejeon, South Korea, piecing together a story about Italy's eviction from the World Cup at the hands of a wonderful South Korea team. The memory of the brilliant Ahn Jung-hwan's goal that night remains imperishable in the memory.
Anyway, a number of us were working late in the Daejon press room when, all of a sudden, the doors burst open and a human commotion flooded in, with an emotional and highlycuckolded Carraro in its midst.
The reason for his ire? Carraro felt Italy had been bounced from the tournament that night by a corrupt referee in Byron Moreno, and megaphones couldn't have raised the distracting volume of his complaints.
Do I even need to mention irony here?
In this context, I sometimes find myself depressed at the paltry nature of corruption in Scotland by comparison. It is simply impossible to imagine David Taylor or amiable John McBeth getting up to such nasty tricks. Even in Scottish politics, when David McLetchie was "done" over the so-called taxis scandal, I think I'm correct in saying the "incredible controversy" was over something amounting to nine hundred quid.
On Monday, Carraro's house was swooped upon by Rome prosecutors, who left with piles of his private papers. Just as in Daejeon, I presume Franco was standing in his driveway, his arms flapping everywhere.
Mileson's tip is no great shakes
FOR fear that some of you may have missed it, may I just repeat my favourite quote of the year, as told to me last week by Brooks Mileson, the laid-back owner of Gretna FC.
I asked Mileson how many cures he'd explored for his ME, to which he replied that he'd tried the lot.
"I've even walked out to the back of my house at midnight and shaken my willy at a full moon to see if it helped, " he said.
I don't recommend this for Herald readers.
I tried it on Tuesday in relation to an assortment of ailments and it has made only a most minor difference.
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