Don't overplay it though, Backwoodsman. Rose tinted specs are as bad as Sun headlines and, understandably, it is what Ard Mhacha felt he was faced with earlier. There are undoubtably problems and the problems are still caused by the minority. However that minority is still very large. There are 60 million people in this county. If just 1% of them are hooligans, football or otherwise, then that is still 600,000 thugs wandering about. And I think the figure is considerably higher just based on personal experience. Out of the potential 100 people I know there are considerably more than one whoi are capable of becomig thugs - If not so already. Not friends, I am glad to say, but certainly people of my aquaintance.

There is also the intangible area of intimidation. A crowd of young men wandering down the pavement shouting loudly may not be breaking the law but they will certainly make my wife or my mother or umpteen other people cross over the road. There are degrees of unaccepable behaviour that do not make it to the papers. In fact - the press seem to think of them as acceptable like I said earlier.

Anyway, like I said before I am not going to argue when all it boils down to is degrees of what is wrong. We are agreed that there is something wrong and that something is somewhere between the Sun headline and the rosy tint!

Cheers

Dave