12th June sees the start of the Euro 2004 tournament – so it will be nothing but soccer soccer soccer everywhere. Regular readers will know how much I loath the ‘round ball game’.

First of at I would like to give this post a little bit of context. Last autumn, Australia hosted the Rugby World Cup. 30,000 stout bulldogs headed down under - for many, to spend up to a month watching games, drinking beer & taking their clothes off &of that 30,000 only 3 were arrested.

Now we are faced with the prospect of a month of soccer – 60,000 football supporters are to travel to Portugal. In preparation, the Home Office has placed a record number of travel bans on known hooligans travelling. It will also increase surveillance of ports & airports to attempt to stop scenes like these (which occurred in at the last competition in Belgium & the Netherlands) occurring again.

Apparently, so far 2,188 people have been banned from going to matches – a further 500 cases are currently going through the Courts to have similar restrictions imposed. According to Home Office Minister Caroline Flint (she of gun control fame),

"We have pulled out all the stops to prevent hooligans from travelling to Portugal.”

The poor old Portuguese are being forced to reintroduce border checks that have been scrapped since 1991 – all in the name of sport. What great fans of the game these people are – fantastic ambassadors from the game & this country. Remember, this is the Government that wants to ban hunting with dogs – foxhunters to the best of my (admittedly flawed) knowledge have never behaved in the manner which our oh so patriotic football fan do. I can think of far better pastimes for this government to ban than foxhunting.