Did you see that swarm of angry bees at the Emirates on Wednesday night?
What a that is, my Celtic friends - pipped only by the knockdown ebay deckchair fabric on offer when come to visit.
Any road, Scott Brown, Snr Donati and all were desperate to get their stingers into one face after he plunged to the turf in the box. It was such a sentimental piece of play-acting I could almost smell the whiff of the caps in me cowboy gun going off as he hit the deck.
Eee, what to say? What to say?
I've been busy trying to find chippy Aussies since 6.00pm yesterday but blow me if there aren't any in the immediate vicinity of the Blue Bell, save the gorgeous barmaid Carly, who has been as resolute as Hussey in not taking any bait.
To be fair, . In a way the bloke has been the Man of the Series. The boos, the bad calls, the ball-in-the-face and then that run out and he still puckered up that odd little plasticine face of his into a mask of something approaching dignified greatness.
I'm confused. How on earth can a sport populated by lovely gentlemen - as opposed to the thugs and hoodlums that populate the game of football - be brought into such ill-repute?
What has happened to the good old game of rugger?
I get a lot of flak every time I touch on the subject of rugby union from the chaps who see the whole sport as a byword for the old values of Corinthian spirit and decent fellows having a good old rumpus.
Well we can put that one to bed, I reckon. Union has always been to my mind a sport that's mostly about rule-bending.
Many have argued, quite successfully, that David Moyes is pound-for-pound the best manager in the Premier League.
Statistically Ferguson is to Moyesy what Usain Bolt is to Dwain Chambers, but Fergie hasn't been achieving quite so much with quite so little, has he?
All of which makesall the more difficult to fathom.
Now I'm not one of them that would scrap international friendlies but having half-watched , I was left asking the same question I ask myself if I ever have the misfortune to stop channel-hopping at Big Brother: 'What the heck is the point of this?'
Rio and Barry drop clangers, Capello sticks to rigid 4-4-2, Defoe scores a brace - in other words, the same old individuals behaving out of character 'cos the game is about as important as celebrity cellulite.
John Terry's getting dead good at talking up the prospects of the team measuring itself up against your Spains, your Frances, your Hollands (none of these teams come in the plural by the way) but as long as you don't get battered it's a pointless exercise.
Hot news!
I can exclusively reveal that I have been approached to take over at . I cannot disclose the source of this offer.
To be fair I wasn't the first person in the pub to be asked. Suffice to say that as I helped the gentleman back on to his bar stool, he seemed genuine enough. He gave me a fixed stare - well, it wasn't so much fixed as semi-detached - and said "Why don't you do it, Robbo, old son?"
They say these two Test matches are back-to-back. Or two on the ? Well they're not exactly are they? There's three days in between for Gawd's sake.
That's three days to ferry the Northern half of over to pack around Freddie's knee (in all the build-up, I can't tell whether the match is being held at or Freddie Knee).
Three days to conjure up some climate shaman from West Leeds to summon up dank, muggy, all-encompassing clouds for the Australian innings.
Three days to squirt Savlon onto Harmy's toe, force Michael Clarke to stretch up high for things just out of reach so that his abdominal strain pings a little harder and to pray that and offline (in short, to pray that he comes back as Mitchell Johnson).
Tell you what. In an age of and angsty footballers slagging it's good to be reminded that football is at heart a simple and passionate game. I just wish that .
In days of yore , carrying out raids across the Scottish border as part of . Horrible we were. There must've been a happy fork in the family tree though but for us to end up with Sir Bob. (I probably stayed on the dark side).
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I'm Derek Robson. People call me Robbo. Legend has it I was raised in the furnace and smog of Teesside. Some might say I took the hard road. I like to tell folk I had trials for Middlesbrough, for Hartlepool and for burglary (not guilty). I've always loved sport. My job is to say it as I see it - whether it's in the bar of the Blue Bell or on this blog. You won't find me calling a spade a soil-redistribution implement.
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