Our Leader set to move Mountain in heroic bid

LockerRoom/Tom Humphries: You'd have thought that in any normal society Baldy Noonan's little Eircom stunt would have taken last week's prize for Most Cynical Act in the face of Political Failure. Then along come the Euro 2008 goons and sweep the prize from under Baldy's feet.

Poor Baldy. If he swept into a women's prison with a fistful of pardons he'd just be in time to see the last of the lags disappearing over the wall.

So let's see now. Scotland, reluctant to shell out £100 million to build the white elephants which would complete their solo bid for Euro 2008 scratch their heads for a minute and say, maybe we're too canny for that, but we know some folk who ain't.

Enter, stage left, your genial co-hosts the Republic of Ireland. Let's examine our situation for a moment. The Leader, despairing of ever getting his Bowl built, went last April like Mohammed to the mountain and shoved £50 million of old money into the mountain's backpocket in order that it would stay still. Duly bought, the GAA staged a little panto and Congress decided against opening up Croke Park. Some dodgy vote counting and 30 quivering delegates hiding in the toilets. Et voila!

Nine months later Euro 2008 bid comes along. With Croke Park open to all sports and with Lansdowne redeveloped, this country would not only have had all the top stadia needed for its own purposes but it would also have been in a splendid position to march forward with Scotland and put in a highly credible bid for an exciting competition. Instead, we have nothing.

Does The Leader appear in public only wearing a pointy hat with the letter D writ large upon it. Sure he does. And I'm an anorexic.

We have nothing EXCEPT the apparent willingness of The Leader to build a £500 million old money (bottom estimate) Bowl bearing his name. We have that and the support of the usual confederacy of dunces who'd happily burn the half billion in the grate if it got us international approval.

So, The Leader, whose independent report on the Bowl appears, by the way, to be missing in action, welcomes the opportunity to co-host Euro 2008 with open arms. Make a binding commitment to build le grand elephant blanc? Why no problemo! Nous sommes les polyglots, n'est pas?

And the FAI, bought out of Eircom Park by The Leader with the promise (among other things) of big slices of the corporate box and premium seat action in the B Bowl are up on their hind legs applauding The Leader's vision and perspicacity. Well olé, olé, olé. We connoisseurs of cynicism have never had it so good.

Now the message from places like Sydney and Montreal, (big places with professional sports, mind) is that a white elephant is a white elephant regardless of whatever big once-off event passed through its digestive system when it was young.

A few Euro 2008 matches do not a viable BertieBowl make. The Bowl is still a crock. It's in the wrong place. It costs too much. It won't get used. It will be a crap, soulless place to go to. Listen, can anyone explain this? If the BertieBowl is such a viable little runner why has our rapacious private sector not built a Desmondarium or a Magnierama or a TonyODome?

When the Scottish Executive deem it imprudent to spend the extra Stg£100 million on the Scottish bid, what sort of shoneen politician would happily spend at least £500 million on getting a small slice of the Euro 2008 action. Why our very own Emperor Hadrian. And apparently, we will let him do so, all for the sake of a few football matches in six years time.

It's not that the Scots really care for us that much. Dragging us in was a wheeze the Tories came up with almost two years ago. The Scots didn't like it then and they don't like it much better now. After all, we pinch all their golf tourism and we snipe away at their whisky and angling markets. They hung with the solo stance till the end. Initially they felt they could impress UEFA with a bid involving just six stadia instead of eight. UEFA said no. Fortunately we don't have the encumbrance of national pride stopping us from joining in at the very last minute in order to save the SFA's face.

The head of the Scottish FA, David Taylor said last Thursday: "I and others went on the record to say our preference was to go with a solo bid because we felt being solo had some advantages with UEFA".

A few days beforehand Simon Lyons, the Irishman directing the Scottish bid noted that "our current stance is that an individual bid by Scotland will put us ahead of the opposition".

Hey, we don't care, we're just happy to be along for the ride!

There is a way out of course. The February 28th deadline set by UEFA merely demands notification of a bid, there is no need for a bid document. The deadline for that is May 31st. By then The Leader, who fixed it for the mountain NOT to move on soccer might have sat down with the mountain and said, "This is a big thing to ask but I recognise that you are an amateur mountain promoting games which are indigenous to us and culturally priceless and very beautiful. As such I am prepared to give you the following tax breaks and to hand you the following cash guarantees if only you'll get the whip out and reverse our little arrangement of last April. Then I could ponce around the country all through May pretending to be the visionary who created our fine Euro bid and saved the country almost a billion Euro in the process. Please lads, please."

It might be done.

Or we could get sense and postpone the whole bid to 2012 as people in the FAI were quietly suggesting before the SFA offered to take the ugly sisters to the ball. In 2012 with a refitted Porky Corky by the Lee, two Dublin stadia and maybe Windsor Park we could have gone in as equal partners with Scotland with a credible well-planned politically symbolic bid. As it is neither last week's Scottish shenanigans and the scarcely credible position of the Irish, will have gone unnoticed at UEFA headquarters in Nyon.

How they must be laughing all the way to la banque. As owners of the tournament's television and ticketing rights, the blazers are what the Mafia call "made guys". And made guys never have to put their hands in their pockets, do they.