WHY I HATE KEANE

Coz they’re part of that plinkey-plonkey school of boy band-masquerading-as-rock-band peddlers of muzak which wears neo-oxfam clothes with aspirations of rebellion but simply reek of indelible middle class concerns with image over content. They’d be quite happy to get a record deal based on the fact they have a strong following among female first year law students - because they have pretty beards: The Clash they ain’t.

ROY Keane? The footballer? Oh no, I don’t hate him - he’s a great player. Always admired him. Pig sick he’s gone to Celtic but - hey - that’s life.

But if we’re talking about football anyway, and I have your attention, I might just use this time to say I’m not big on end-of-year reviews of football matters. Ye know what I mean?

There’s a lot of it about right now - what with it being almost the end of the calendar year and all: “Best footie moments of 2005″, “A look back at the year’s best goals”, “12 months of great offside decisions”, ye know - all that kind of nonsense.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ll read all the newspaper pieces and watch all the TV features with a “That was the year that was” slant - but it’s because they’re about football, and I’d read the telephone directory from beginning to end if they just retitled it “the football fan’s guide to telephone numbers”. I’m a slave to football, me - I’m football’s bitch, me - see me, I’m The Beautiful Game’s gimp. I’ll read or watch anything to do with football but, if I had to pick a time to do a review of a set footballing period of time, I’d make it the beginning or end of summer.

As Nick Hornby says, fitbaw punters measure their years from August to May - with World Cups and European Championships shoved in-between, every second summer. Ye have to get a whole domestic season into any worthwhile footie review of a 12-month period.

This, incidentally, is why the European Footballer of the Year award is fundamentally flawed - even though it’s the best award there is. World Footballer of the Year? FIFPRO? Shove them up yer arse - give me the Ballon d’Or anytime. It’s the oldest, it’s the best and, like most great football institutions, it’s dodgy as fuck. How else can ye be European Footballer of the Year when ye’ve only played 18 domestic games from January to December? Oh yeah. I do not lie. It’s 2002, You’re Ronaldo and in-between being injured with Internazionale and injured with Real Madrid, ye manage to score 8 goals in the World Cup finals. Bang - European Footballer of The Year: Yer not European, ye didn’t play for anything like a year and yer major achievement was to score 8 goals in Asia!

Anyway … point is, sorry if ye’ve come on this site expecting an in-depth, dewy-eyed round-up of the year’s events. Nah. That’s trying to shoe-horn a general sense of reflectiveness (or, as we call it in Scotland, The Bells) into a period of time which is right in the middle of it’s term. We’re intae the fitbaw on this site and the fitbaw runs from end of July to beginning of May this season. The time for reviews is when the trophies are all dished out for 2005/2006. That’s why I didn’t even bother with a “Not The Review” or “The Year my Father wore” or “Hullo Hullo, we are the review boys” headline: Didn’t want to create even a false revising impression.

I mean, if I started trying to talk about how UTTERLY BRILLIANT it was when we won the SPL title on 22nd May this year, I’d be duty-bound to start that particular story in July 2004!! Ye know - how could I give ye the FULL picture on the MOST AMAZING CHAMPIONSHIP WIN OF MY LIFE, YOUR LIFE AND RANGERS’ HISTORY without prefixing the UTTER DELIRIUM of the combined events at Easter Road and Fir Park that day with at least a cursory look at how things had gone so wrong for us back in the autumn of 2004? … and how we came back from that … to be crowned champions …

Nah. Won’t do it.

Similairly - how could I do a bona fide flash-back on even our lovely wee LEAGUE CUP FINAL VICTORY OVER MOTHERWELL in March without going through all the games we played enroute to that SMASHING 5-1 WIN AT HAMPDEN, particularly our 2-1 extra-time quarter-final defeat of Celtic and our 2-0 win at Pittodrie in the first round, both of which took place in 2004? Not a review of 2005 is it?!! Naw - and it’s not a review of 2004/2005 either.

So, ye see, I’m not so (Roy) keen on doing a review of 2005. No. No way. Because, even to describe our SPL woes this season, our RECORD RUN OF TEN GAMES WITHOUT A WIN, is only half a story. It’s a story which can only be fully told when we know how much that run means in real terms and, so far, the only solid result that run has reaped, if we take two of those ten games - the AGAINST-ALL-ODDS DRAW AWAY TO PORTO and the STUNNINGLY GLAMOROUS AND HISTORIC HOME DRAW WITH INTERNAZIONALE - our ten-game un-winning run has reaped nothing concrete other than making us THE FIRST SCOTTISH CLUB EVER TO QUALIFY FROM A CHAMPIONS LEAGUE GROUP STAGE. That’ s hardly the true extent of such a bad run so we have to wait til next May to count the real cost.

Obviously, people expect that the seven SPL games we failed to win in that little run will cost us the title but that’s a title we will lose in calendar year 2006 and - hey - with Celtic now dropping points, Gordon Strachan changing thr subject in thr media already and Rangers the ones suddenly on thr winning run and us and Hibs thr only teams to defeat Hearts this season, there’s nothing guaranteed about who we’ll lose the league to or if we’ll even lose it at all. See, it seems daft for me to do a review of 2005 because THERE WAS ONLY ONE SPL TITLE AVAILABLE IN 2005 AND RANGERS WON IT - AN HISTORIC 51st CHAMPIONSHIP OF SCOTLAND FOR OUR FABULOUS CLUB…and that’s not a real story of the year, is it.

Okay, if that 10 -game run of not-scoring-more-than-our-opponents had resulted in the sacking or resignation of our manager then, yes, we could have shoved that into a Review of The Year but, as it stands, ALEX MCLEISH WAS HERE LAST YEAR, HE’S HERE THIS YEAR and HE’LL BE HERE NEXT YEAR. So what’s the point of doing a review of this year?

Basically, between January and December, we made history, grabbed everyone’s attention and imagination and raised Scotland’s profile in Europe - but there’s nothing really to report about 2005 in itself.

So, we’ve got The Pars on Boxing Day - really looking forward to that, love my festive footy. And I’m looking forward to having yet another pop at removing our Dundee United bogey on Hogmanay. We can talk about all that at the time. But don’t expect to see any reviews of the year, here, troops - coz the stuff which has hapened to Ranges in 2005 cannot be confined to one year, one season, one manager: 2005 has been EPOCH-MAKING. And so much of it has been utterly, UTTERLY WONDERFUL.

Besides, what would be the point of Dave, our resident St Johnstone-loving boffin, having rigged up an ARCHIVE at the right hand side of this page if I just re-wrote evrything I’d wrote over the last 12 months in one new rant?!

I ain’t into either the first or second syllable of the upcoming holiday but I am very much into HOLIDAYs and family, friends and everyone having a right good nosh, dwinky-winky, natter and laugh. Whatever team you support, thanks for reading the site, troops and thanks to those who keep it going with the explosive, discussive, humorous, sick and generally well-meant posts. Have a Very Merry Xmas, everyone and remember - THE DIET STARTS NEXT YEAR!

Yours Bluely

Your Ed

Soon-to-be-even-fatter Fat Eck