IT would be very remiss of me not to mention Euro 96, especially as Blackburn's Alan Shearer has been so instrumental in England reaching the last four.

Of course by the time you read this, they may very well have marched into the finals. If they have, nationalism will have swelled to VE Day proportions. And it is on that subject that I will base our little chat this week.

National pride is one thing, rampant xenophobia is quite another. And the antics of certain down-market tabloids over the past couple of weeks has been nothing short of disgraceful.

Euro 96 was meant to be an opportunity for England to prove that it could stage a major sporting event without the mob violence and ugliness which has become so much a part of everyday life in this country.

Thanks to a police presence which would probably have overawed the legions of Ghengis Khan, the tournament so far - and I'm writing this on the eve of the semi-finals remember - have, thankfully, been relatively trouble-free.

That has had nothing to do with the tabloids. They have done their best to whip up national fervour to an impossible degree, only marginally stopping short of encouraging English fans to clobber ALL non-Brits as a matter of policy!

What hypocrisy. What humbug. The same papers spawned headlines which have gone down in history. Who can forget Swedes 2, Turnips 0; Yanks 1, Planks 0.

And after the mind-boggling mediocrity against Switzerland in the Euro 96 opener, our brave boys were dismissed as drunken yobs who trained on lager and late nights.

A week is a long time in politics. It's even longer in football, it would appear.

Now the England team is being hailed with the same reverence as the World Cup heroes of 1966. Bunkum. They beat Scotland because McAllister missed a penalty and seconds later Gascoigne revealed a flash of the individual brilliance which once made him a great player.

Then they whacked a Dutch team ruptured internally and were clearly second best against Spain, only to win in the least satisfactory way: a penalty shoot-out.

I hope all this doesn't indicate that I am in any way scornful of the fact that England have made it this far. I'm British and proud of it. It's just I don't believe that baying at foreigners and writing derogatory comments about them is acceptable behaviour.

One wonders what effect Euro 96 is having on the young. I have no knowledge of school curricula but imagine that unity with our continental neighbours is actively encouraged in lessons and exchange visits.

Impressionable teenagers who have seen the lurid banner headlines of recent days must be high on a heady mix of jingoism and expectancy. Fuel that with booze, either in celebration of victory of drowning of sorrows and you have a recipe for trouble.

And who will pick up the tab for that? Not the Sun, Mirror, Star, News Of The World, People, etc, etc.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.