You could almost hear the terrifying silence around the sports departments of Europe when they were divvying out the work for the European Championship soccer matches last week.
"Right, who wants to go to Belfast? Nobody? Well who wants to go to Belgrade then? Just the one? Okay, here's your flak jacket."
You will smirk only if you have never been to Windsor Park, home of Linfield, home of the Northern Ireland football team. And they say sport and politics don't mix? The stadium is located in a Loyalist part of the city known as the Village, as terrifying a place to people from Ballymurphy as Casement Park in Anderson's Town is to those from the Shankhill Road.
It was the 57th minute when we heard the first chimes from the crowd breaking into their sectarian hymn as Northern Ireland tore into World Champions France in the Belfast friendly. Captain Steve Lomas had just slid into another 110 per cent committed tackle with his two-bob hair-cut and studs up.
"Lomas, the Northern Ireland captain leading by example," observed commentator Jackie Fullerton on BBC Northern Ireland. Fullerton favours a bouffant hair style, but that's another story.
British Sports Minister Kate Hoey, a Belfast native, had been interviewed at half-time to lend normality to the occasion. Her father, she recalled fondly, used to bring her to Windsor Park when she was a girl.
The problem is that Windsor Park isn't normal. The Sash isn't a normal song. "My father wore it on the 12th in the grand old days of yore. And it's on the 12th I love to wear the sash my father wore."
It is a sectarian anthem designed to be provocative and to alienate. It might even be against the law.
Just as they hummed theme tunes from Second World War films when the German side visited not so long ago, the loyal supporters Northern Ireland carried on where they had left off. Windsor Park ought to carry a government health warning. The place is a festering with sectarian ooze.
The Irish Football Association (IFA) have hard choices ahead. They can continue to hold international matches at the venue and try to trivialise the bigotry or they can pretend that the problem rests with just a few yobbos. Either way, they might like to contemplate a national football team that seems to serve only one side of a community and a hardcore following resistant to ecumenical conversion in any guise.
Yugoslavia against Croatia in Belgrade on TV3. No sport in politics? Slobodan Milosovic, the Yugoslav leader bombed by NATO for acts of genocide against ethnic Albanians, had bought up 20,000 seats in order to prevent unseemly demonstrations which might have damaged his popularity.
Fire crackers popped around the ground and the lights then went out for 45 minutes allowing the home supporters (there were no Croatians) to chant anti-Milosevic and anti-Croatian slogans under the cover of darkness. It also allowed commentators to get nervous.
Television and sport affords people opportunities they normally wouldn't have, the chance to export their views be they loyalist chants from Belfast or anti-government slogans from Belgrade. The European qualifier was televised live to 70 countries.
In Seville on Thursday athletes were doing the same thing. Sending messages and using television to propagate their opinions. Sky News showed most of it, but snatches were broadcast on the major networks.
Michael Johnson, the Olympic 200 metres and 400 metres champion, Maurice Greene, the 100 metres world record holder and world number one sprinter Marion Jones decided to strike back at the International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF) in one of the first demonstrations of player power in the sport.
"Over the last couple of weeks, we have had so many sudden cases, I am not 100 per cent happy it is the correct testing procedure," said Jones referring to the out-break of nandrolone positives.
The American didn't discuss her scientific qualifications for holding such a view. Her familiarity with mass spectrometry wasn't mentioned, nor the sources from which she gleaned the information which led to her deep and public unhappiness about incorrect testing procedures.
"The number of tests coming out is bad for our sport," said Greene while Johnson nodded in agreement. Greene was correct but where was he going? Stop testing? Sweep the positives under the carpet? No, he wanted blood testing, a more efficient method!
The three sat on stools passing a hand-held microphone along the line like a scene from the trashy afternoon talk show hosted by Rikki Lake. We were expecting a caption to run across the screen at any second. "Before a Palm Springs operation Michael used to be Melissa and 300 pounds."
It was educational to watch the athletes running scared and attempting to undermine the people who have been employed by the IAAF to protect their interests and their sport. Many people stopped believing in athletics long ago. The three sprinters did little to arrest that trend.
More politics? More sport? English rugby coach Clive Woodward popped up on BBC, ITV and SKY on Wednesday as England reinstated Lawrence Dallaglio in what must have been a bittersweet week for the former captain and number eight.
His sister Francesca (19) was one of 51 people who died on the Marchioness tragedy on the Thames 10 years ago. This week a public inquiry was finally granted. Woodward's move six days before Dallaglio appears in front of the RFU on charges following an inquiry into drug allegations was a powerful public statement of support.
"I have said from the start that I believe Lawrence is innocent," said Woodward. You wonder given the proximity of the World Cup whether Woodward's obvious plea for arguably the most influential player on the England team will carry any weight with the RFU. If it doesn't, there must be something wrong.
Whoever said sport and politics don't mix was an ass.
