Spitting Homage

Auld Ayr, wham ne’er a toon surpasses,
for “Macho” men who’re clipey wee grasses …

Make no mistake, as demonstrated by the TV highlights of last weekend’s Scottish Cup match, Grady gave our defence a really hard time - at least twice … one of his moments was even within 50 yards of our goal. For a First Division player, the diminutive Ayr striker did well to bring blatant fouls out of both Amo and Craig Moore but that was it as far as his contribution to the action was concerned.

And no-one was about to deny him his moment on the BBC’s edited highlights. Rangers stroll on to the quarter finals - that’s hardly news - so let’s disproportionately emphasise the three or four seconds of play in which Ayr looked like something other than a class below. Fair enough. We can live with that media approach to such matches - these teams deserve their moment in the spotlight. Too bad that on this occasion, Grady ruined it for his team-mates and his club. How sad that he tried to make more of his own tiny part in what was essentially a stroll for The Gers by bleating like the very kind of player he purports to despise so much.

Was Amo riled by Grady’s nippy robustness? Clearly. Was his spittle aimed AT Grady? Well, I doubt the Puglian pugilist was too bothered whether or not he actually landed his mucus on the little cretin. I doubt he was even thinking clearly enough to care. The spit was certainly aimed in Grady’s direction. Whether to hit the Ayr player or just land challengingly in front of his path is unknown. Everyone likes to have a pop at Amo for his wayward free-kicks but now we’re all being told he’s 100% accurate with his phlegm throwing.

Grady COULD have run into it but, personally, I can’t see there being much doubt: Lorenzo deliberately landed some saliva on an opponent during Saturday’s Scottish Cup match. Disgusting? Absolutely.

However, we have to take a look at our own, very Germanic/Nordic preception of this very Latin phlegm-nomenon. Ian Ferguson landed one on Gordan Petric a few years ago, when the latter was part of a Dundee United side which won at The Brox: Hysteria ensued in the tabloids - A Scotsman who spits at an opponent! I was thoroughly ashamed that day and I’m always disgusted by this scummy little act. Yet how daft is it that we pale-faces, we cholesterol kings of the north, think it better to have a leg broken in a 50-50 tackle than to wash a bit of gob from our already sweat-and-muck-stained shirts?!

Knowing how silly this seems to players from the Iberian and Italian peninsulas doesn’t stop it being my instinctive way of thinking. If somebody gobbed on me, I WOULD be more likely to deck them than if they’d gone in baring the studs against me for a 50-50 ball … for example, like the chance on Saturday which saw brave, fair-minded Grady dig his boots into Stefan Klos’s chest and arms, long after our keeper had gathered the ball. But we have to look at the Latin view of the spitting debate to understand why Amo might feel he reacted reasonably calmly, given the tirade of personal abuse he was taking from Grady.

When Gazza was at Lazio he very notably didn’t do as the Romans during an impromptu interview on the street from a nosey roving reporter. The Gateshead genius burped like a foghorn down the media man’s mike and appalled the delictae off-field manners of our Italian cousins. It was a public relations disaster. Back in blighty, however, there was more than a little burp of reverse snobbery when the incident was replayed on our tellys. Weren’t the Italians being just a little bit prim and prissy about the legendary British comedy routine on bodily functions. What else did we expect from people who wear nice clothes, look after their hair and take a tan?! In any decent person’s language, Gazza’s roar from the stomach was just plain disgusting. But constantly hounding someone during their private moments, with a mike and a TV camera, is also reprehensible. Neither party came out of the matter with any credit but petty ideas of national identity, spun by both medias, resulted in a sad battle for a moral high ground. A cultural rift indeed.

Same thing’s happening with the Grady gobbing. This time with the Italian footballer in Britain.

Amo claims Grady was dishing out anti-Italian insults. Lorenzo ain’t no angel himself - we can say the alleged verbal abuse our former capo suffered on Saturday still pales into insignificance when compared to the stuff he himself said to Borussia Dortmund’s Viktor Ikpeba during an infamous UEFA Cup match. Slagging someone’s skin or creed is always worse than slandering their nationality (Although if anyone was to deride the quality of Amo’s tan, I suspect the injury caused would be ever-lasting!) so we’ll again say the Big Man should’ve been able to take it. We’ll again confess that Amo was probably more upset by the fact his opponent was a bit too tricky with the ball … twice.

But what of wee Jimmy Grady - running to the press and it’s armoury of cliches and stereotypes, seeking more of the shop-window limelight and a scurrilous route by which to imbue his very modest on-field performance?! The language of the Scottish football media’s attitudes to spitting is the language of machismo. “There’s no place for that in a man’s game” bleated Grady - yet he was SO “manly” himself, he went on national television to grass up big Amo … instead of STICKING ONE ON HIM IN THE TUNNEL - like any “normal” player would!

He sat there on the Sportscene couch, Murdo “don’t ever slag celtic” McLeod ready to back up “the wee man’s” every moan, and tried to affect an air of “I don’t really care” while shopping a fellow professional to half the country. “It’s just one of those things - you just have to get on with it” said the denim-jacketed attention-seeker as he co-commentated on slow-mo replays of Amo’s saliva flying through the air. Just have to get on with what, oh nonchalant one? making sure every fellow sellik fan in scotland knows you “wound up Amoruso” and that you proved, yet again, how evil are The Mighty Rangers. The boys in various themed bars up and down the country must’ve been oh-so proud - if you can’t actually play for celtic, you might as well play up to the stereotyped attitudes of their fans. Eh, Jamesie mah mahn?

Apparently Grady spoke to Barry Ferguson and Alex McLeish about the incident - no doubt feeling he’d more chance of a transfer to the SPL if he could converse with real stars of the game. This was supposed to make us feel Little James had done all he could to keep the matter within the inner sanctum of professional football. But publicly bad-mouthing a player who publicly mouthed badly on you, kind of negates any pretensions to chivalry, don’t you think?

The cameras caught Amo’s moment of mankiness well and good. If Grady’d refused to discuss it with the press, who’d no doubt have gone to town on it anyway, then I could have had more (ie SOME) respect for the guy.

Remember Stuart Pearce taking a whap in the face from future Gers misfit Basile Boli during Euro 92? Every camera in the ground saw the big Frenchman deliberately butt the England full-back, square in the coupon, no ball in sight … or even in play. After the game, Pearce was shown the footage and asked what he thought. He just smiled and calmly said “it’s one of these things - I’m sure it was an accident”. Every viewer was left in no doubt that (a) Stuart Pearce was gonnae nail Basile Boli if he ever came across him on the field again, (b) Stuart Pearce, as a man who could dish it out, could also take it and (c) Stuart Pearce’s on-field skills might not always be the silkiest but as a pro footballer, his attitude was class.

Are you listening, Grady? “CLASS!”, I said. You spell it C - L - A … what? You can’t hear me? Something in your ear? Let me see. No, that’s not wax - it’s a hardened mouthful of Baileys …