CASINO LOYALE: Gers cashing in transfer chips

Who mentioned “chips”??!!. Oh yes!)

Casino. A film so disturbingly violent I didn’t watch it for about a year after my first viewing. Considering it starred De Niro and Pesci, was directed by Scorcese - my all-time fav triumvirate - and featured the most amazing performance by Sharon “here’s where I keep my loose change” Stone, this was a quite remarkable aversion on my part.

My problem, I think, was that I didn’t see Goodfellas at the cinema - I saw it very, very late for some reason, on video - I probably wanted to ensure the timing was just right, that everything else in my life was at a stage of organisation which would prevent any interference in my first worshipful consumption of the greatest actor-director partnership of them all. Anyways, I saw Goodfellas very late - it was a beltingly powerful epic - and then I saw Casino the moment it hit the screens (in fact, I think Shazza Stone took me to the New York premiere. She just used me like a himbo - they all do. I’m actually MORE than just a clothes horse…): The similarities between the two movies, the brevity of the interlude between initial viewings and, more pointedly, the escalation of visceral, humiliating violence in the latter opus, was all too much.

I left the cinema, after my first viewing of Casino, feeling a bit like De Niro when he’s blown up by that crap car bomb at the beginning.

Yesterday, however, I felt a bit more like that bloke who gets stabbed fifty three times in the face with his fountain pen by Joe Pesci.

Well, if I didn’t Martin Bain and David Murray might have.

Casino, the movie, is now one of my all-time favs. I can watch they guys getting their throats cut with their heads in a vice or their brains battered in by baseball bats before being buried half alive, and it’s now just all part of that movies unstoppable genius. It’s only disturbing in that I know so many other movies are unsettlingly crap by comparison. Now I’m only sickened watching Casino because my own lack of talent compared to ANY of the participants in that film’s creation is just nauseatingly chastening.

But “casino”, the word, began haunting me yesterday. And I ain’t a St Etienne fan, know what I mean??!! (Big round of applause for the first poster to explain that connection!).

If you’re really bored, and with the way the transfer market’s currently looking for Rangers there’s slightly less chance of that happening, I’d take a kwik swatch at the Sheffield United website. Scroll down its news items on the home page and you’ll see the same story as on the front of the Gers official website, just swap “Gers” for “blades”, “Bramall Lane” for “Ibrox”, and “Sheffield” for “Glasgow”.

I dare say it’s the same story on the Blackpool FC website and a few more generic cyber spots up and down the country. We were given the big KB as regards the Super casino development. Manchester - home of all eternal commercial richness in soccer - won the bid to become Britain’s Las Vegas and the bittterest amongst us didn’t blame the Scottish Executive’s lack of support, we BLAMED THE IDOLATROUS PAPIST CONSPIRUSHAY BY THE SHELTIC-RIDDLED GLASGOW DISTRICT COUNCIL.

(Of course, it’s nothing to do with the cooncil, really, but we might as well make the 21st century the era of imagined anti-RANGERS bigotry. Celtic fans had their turn from 1900 to 2000. If it’s got a fresher angle, the nonsensical aspect of any such “everybudy’s oot tae get us” claim isn’t so obvious.)

Some folk, of course, are worried about increases in gambling addiction and we’d no doubt have seen all sorts of socially-aware saints suddenly popping out from amidst the celtic support (why is it always them? Why, for example, do no fans of other clubs come onto this blog to claim moral outrage??!!) the moment Rangers won the right to build a money-spinning complex next to Govan Palace. Football’s ALWAYS been money-driven. It’s always exploited the working classes as much as it’s comforted us - it’s always been a shabby, tacky business in terms of how it makes and spreads its dough and I’ve always loved it all the more for that neo-honesty. Gambling’s just another easily-targeted money-spinner, like selling cardiac-inducing pies at half-time. Fitbaw’s always been mercilessly mercenary. Celtic, for example, stole the entire Hibs team with the lure of bigger crowds to establish themselves as a “charitable institution” in 1888.

And, just when we might have started to think there’s sweet hee-fucking-haw in the Ibrox coffers because of this Casino knock back, Mr Murray has invoked the Brother Walfrid Rule once again: We’ve given Hibs £2Million - they’ve sent another of their stars through to Glasgow. Twas always thus: They might as well re-name that motorway the M1888.

I decided to go to the CIS Cup semi-final last night. I haven’t had my usual dosage of Cup Football this season due to our comparatively early exits from both knock-out comps so I felt the Fir Park meeting of Falkirk and Killie would allow me the methodone fix necessary to stave off Cold Turkey. More than that, all Gers semis are at one of Glasgow’s big grounds, always. This was a chance for me to sneak a pervy grope and feel of what it would be like to be a provincial punter - big atmos, crammed into a wee ground, playing for a domestic Cup your club has never lifted before.

And it was a rip-roaring affair right enough. The Killie fans singing their classic “Paper Roses” anthem with ten minutes left and the game over, was very touching for a north Ayrshire lad. For the rest of the game they’d been singing “Hullo! Hullo! We are the Killie boys” - up to their knees in Ay-ur blood! Just rubbing it in how ANTI-RANGERS was the UEFA ruling and tabloid drooling over our own erstwhile anthem (Lol! I’m enjoying this new-found victimhood! You pick it up quite easy once you get started, don’t ye, bhoys?!).

Was telling myself I must alert the punters on the blog to the skills of Steven Naismith - must ask Walter to put a bid in for him - when the wee bugger scored a sensational hat-trick and did that job for me. Once I’d got over the sight of Davie Weir stood two rows in front of me in the old Fir Park main Stand wearing a GREEN AND BLACK scarf (its celtic-away-stripness might have been obfuscated by a trendy cut and quality material but - FFS, Davie! - next thing you know you’ll be against same-sex couples adopting kids!! … OH YESSS! Loving this new paranoia vibe! ), I enjoyed a unique pair of doubles: Through a press-pass freebie accident I was also at the 2001 Hampden CIS semi which Killie won 3-0 - AND I was at Hillsborough during 1996 when Denmark and Man United’s PETER Schmeichel, father of Falkirk’s goalie last night, had three put past him by Croatia to much derision by the assembled Man Ure-hating locals.

Also thought last night would let me do a bit of scouting on Alan “Gowswer” Gow! Mmmm. Not OVERLY impressed. Missed the kind of chance which would get him hung at Ibrox and, generally, wasn’t able to match his movement with his finishing. BUT, Killie did have a great night - they wanted it more.

As I sat in a traffic jam on the outskirts of Motherwell before the game, praying Chick Young would tell me the kick-off had been delayed (he did), I was pleasantly surprised to hear Kevin Thomson is on his way to our left mid for the sum of £2M. As far as we can be sure of any purchase, this is a great signing. Young, talented, Scottish and a political boost for Smith and Murray with punters like myself who suspected they are now a kind of End Game regime. Even if Thomson does break his ankle at Friday’s press conference, as is traditional with new Gers signings, it shows the kind of willingness to compete in the transfer market which our desultory offers for Lee McCulloch and Allan Gow and our recent “captures” of octogenarian centre-halfs has not.

Hartley, we thought at that point, was still on his way - another couple of reviewed bids should have got him to us by midnight. And, with the Thomson purchase such a surprise, this let our imaginations run rabid about who might come in before that same deadline.

Letizi is off to somewhere “Nice” and Tommy Buffel was mibbee going to the toon where football started in Germany, Hannover. These are the guys we’re clearing out and getting off the wage bill and, in Buffel’s case, adding to the transfer kitty which Clement’s resale first boosted. I want Gow, McCulloch AND Scott Brown all here by this time tomorrow. And the Casino knockback does not seem to have dented these prospects - on the contrary, we’ve just become more aggressive in the player market than anyone anticipated.

Brown, say Hibs, is going nowhere. But they said that about Thomson. On the other hand, we may have forced Celtic to play their big hand, by playing our own too early. Despite the fact they already have a solid enough squad in place, the hysterics at Parkned may force Peter Lowell to act - they could very well go in there and offer £3M for Brown tonight. OH … stop press! - the smellies have just signed Hartley - there ye go, they had to get face back somehow. Wonder if we’ll reply in kind in the next few hours…

We just don’t know where the ball’s gonnae land, but at least we’ve got a real bet on that spinning wheel this time, troops.

….. THIS IS A RANT IN PROGRESS, TROOPS - MORE PISH TO COME ON THIS PAGE SHORTLY … IT’S TRANSFER WINDOW DEADLINE DAY … PUTTING A NEW PARAGRAPH HERE EVERY HOUR IS THE CLOSEST I CAN GET TO REPLICATING THE “AS IT HAPPENS” VIBE OF SKY SPORTS NEWS … AND I’M NOH AS GOOD LOOKING AS JIM WHITE …

Hold that result: This rant is NO LONGER in progress. Just like Tommy Buffel’s move to Lower Saxony. So the obvious rash of cash has dissipated but, if The Murray Mint finds himself getting annoyed by Celtic’s pathetic attempt to replace Shaun Maloney and appease their mypoics, plenty can still happen between now and Midnight.

Hopefully plenty does happen. But, you can catch the news for the news’ sake on more appropriate websites than this. I’m just here to be smart after the fact…sorry, I mean I’m just here to “express my opinions”. I’ll do that the morra nicht, when the dust has settled. Right now, it’s time to strap ourselves into the big comfy chair, listen to BBC Scotland’s “Through the window” programme and watch Sky Sports’ news’ ticker tape with the “Mute” button on.

THEN we can let the griping, sniping or hyping begin!

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Published:
01.31.07 / 7am
Category:
News