FAIR MAKES you proud, no? A handful of wir patriots standing fast and tall against police brutality and municipal mismanagement? Stirs the blood (if any) and fires the loins. Those heroes of Manchester will be long remembered in song, story and their own very tiny, forever diminishing imaginations.

Excuses and explanations will be, and have been, proffered. One joker graced many of the news bulletins last week. What did they expect? he wanted to know. Put all those charming Jocks together in one small space with lager and such? What did "they" expect?

Perhaps this: just the off-chance, the outside possibility, that the capacity to behave like a human being somehow remains?

In Scotland's parliament, on the morning after the ruck before, sensible people said sensible things about lessons and learning. In a very responsible, non-partisan way they were eager, on all sides, to record that only a "small minority" had behaved "unacceptably".

Here's another lesson. In some parts of this country, a few dozen arrests and "just the one" stabbing will be counted as a wholly law-abiding night out. And if we are not getting an award for that, there's surely a conspiracy going on.

This week's anecdote. The last time I attended a Scotland game at Hampden we were playing England. There's your dating evidence. I travelled back afterwards on the train with elements of the lovely, cuddly Tartan Army, those whom all the world adore.

Is it just me, or is a comic song about the many ways in which Victoria Beckham "takes it" less than funny? And those were the good guys, they tell me, of world football.

I know a very little bit about the game. If you want racist pigs, go to Spain. If you search for unalloyed fascists, look to Italy. In eastern Europe, they still find making monkey noises in the faces of black players hilarious. In England, the difference between the urbane and the ugly is always slight. But is any of that an excuse for Manchester? Forgive me when I differ.

I grant this: the vast majority of travelling Rangers fans sought no problems and caused no difficulties. The majority are always normal, always decent, always happier to avoid bruises and blood. That might be my point: the majority are never a problem for those who call themselves the majority. So what, to labour a point, do you do with the rest?

Football and big music events are the last locales left to what was once known as the mob. You can more easily allow 100,000 Gers fans into central Manchester than you can organise a demo within a mile of the House of Commons.

When the G8 came to Edinburgh, police controllers behaved outrageously towards legitimate democratic protest. Had the fracas involved a mere football crowd, someone would have suggested beer tents, a big-screen TV, and a few laughs with the plods. Perhaps this is the point at which bread, circuses and lone strikers get mentioned.

Do you placate scum with little treats, or slap them hard? A crude question, I know. But I hear that Moscow has reduced its tolerance level to zero for the forthcoming Champions League final. No "fanzones", no indulgence, no cheap beer. After Manchester, it would be difficult indeed to argue with a Muscovite. It might also be tricky to talk about football's "family".

There are two issues, nevertheless, where football and violence are concerned. One has to do with the sport's attraction for people - specifically men, who would not dream of making obnoxious noises in any other context - who are actually frustrated. How does any society cope with a maleness that finds no other release? And if it must be released, is football really preferable to jogging or joining the Liberal Democrats?

Second point. I know a little fact or two about La Liga, and about Serie A, and about the rest. Racism, fascism, nationalism and the usual scum: these phenomena are located within a cultural context. But if such is the case, where do we begin to discuss Sir David Murray's Rangers Football Club? Some things are only, or overwhelmingly, Scottish. We lack the capacity, it seems to me, to talk about ourselves.

ONE striking excuse emerged from the troubles in Manchester: no sectarianism. Funny old validation, but true. For the usual miscreants there was no reason, no point, to transport bigotry to northwest England. No Papes or Taigs were available for the fight. Instead, the minority took the old domestic trouble-seeking, the ancient habituated violence, the pack-animal scheme behaviour, to a sunny city. This is - and watch the tears - true. I come from those schemes.

They brought down that PC you keep on seeing on TV in much the way that mangy hyenas will bring down a straggler. If you have ever had the misfortune to be in one of those situations, you know how it goes. But what do you then excuse, and how do you begin to explain? And what might you then say about being Scottish? Keep your pride, please, for another day.

Control of the mob has become a task for governments globally. We struggle against it, if we can. People are dying in Burma just because several small, uniformed creeps are terrified of their own citizens: that's the story.

But in this dulling light, Rangers and the inveterate violence of those loyal and true minority become irrelevant, utterly trivial, utterly tedious. The usual. The reliably dismal.

This is, however, the only country I've got, or want, and the scum are always with us. My fellow scum, if you like. Am I therefore reflected in the shattered mirror of a nation?

Is "Scottish" no better than some creep who clips a copper so that the mob can fall like ravening dogs on a working man? Is a nation just a mob with a fancy name?

Around the world, football has become a lightning rod. Billions are available, from Rupert Murdoch and others, to anyone who can harness the "passion". It is another word, in common sense, for the kind of lunacy that loses sight of things known to five-year-olds. One of those things: someone has to lose. This is life.

Scots would appear to have difficulties with the concept. They tell me, and I believe them, that this is an ancient and therefore mature democracy. Some advise that, after the Athenians, we did more for the demos than most. That's nice. So what am I supposed to conclude when I see some fat get in a sweaty jersey with a big stick threatening the peace of the dull and decent city of Manchester?

Something has gone wrong. We raise our young men badly. We obsess over things that could never possibly matter to grown-ups. We misunderstand nationhood as a kind of puerile revenge. And we never, ever say: enough, no more, not in my world.

I do not in fact blame Rangers FC, as such. The record will show that Sir David and a succession of coaches have spoken for civilisation frequently. But a black fist continues to rise from the dead flesh of old, brutal Scotland to deny a future for my country ...

So what was the recently popular phrase? Right. Bring it on. Bring it, hounds and vermin. We saw it in Manchester. I grew up with some of it. It had a certain stench you recognise.

I know those boy-men. The international excuses of international football, or even some hack with a lecture on the survival of "the mob", don't cut it. This is an issue, specifically Scottish, about which we have not even begun to chat.

You cannot create a country from your least-worst. You cannot create a country if you for an instant lose real belief. But you truly cannot have a country if you fail to tell the truth about scum.