THERE may be a smack of repentance in today's toning-down of the trashy tabloids' disgraceful anti-German campaign over tomorrow's Euro 96 semi-final clash with England.

But this hardly absolves the original offence.

For, despite all the pleas today that these over-the-top attacks were really only "humour" out of the 'Allo, 'Allo mould, their repellent aim was to inject hatred into sport and turn a sporting contest into a war.

Thankfully, this poisonous propaganda has backfired and the newspapers involved have been hit by a deluge of protest and complaint - led notably by World Cup hero Sir Bobby Charlton - from the decent majority of sporting fans who want none of this thuggery in ink.

For it is not simply that they do not wish to be associated with the tirade of shameful insult to the Germans, it is also that they do not want their own intelligence insulted.

Nor do they tolerate the memory of those who fought and died in the wars with Germany being sullied by the puerile, oafish efforts of these tabloids to turn Euro 96 into a loutish replay of those conflicts.

This was shamefully exampled yesterday by the Daily Mirror's front-page parody of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's 1939 announcement of the outbreak of war with Germany.

And riling though it is for responsible newspapers to be tarred with the bad reputation that the press in general is given when tabloid excess plunges to the very bottom of the gutter, we take comfort in these muck-serving editors being roundly disabused by their readers that this is the sort of stuff they want.

They don't!

The vast majority of us want sport to be sporting - the stuff of fair play and healthy rivalry.

And has that not been proved by the tremendous atmosphere and impeccable behaviour of the fans at all the Euro 96 games so far?

For the tabloids to try and whip up the nasty side of soccer support - and to wrap this provocation and xenophobic insult in the national flag - shows what thugs they are.

And hypocrites also.

For all this so-called getting-behind-the-England-team, which they claim is the purpose of this hateful bash-the-Germans campaign, comes after years of chorus from the tabloids over what no-hopers the side has been!

Patriots?

Scoundrels more like - and deserving to be shown up as such.

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