I just can't stand it

I hate racism with a passion.

It's about the only thing in this world which will provoke an outburst, or tirade if you will, from an otherwise pretty laiser faire guy.

I understand that players try to wind each other up on the field so that there performance diminishes.

Although my Dad didn't play at any sort of level, he was one of the masters. Always bending the rules to suit his defending end.

If it is true that Materazzi said what the lip readers are saying he said, then I hope he is deeply ashamed for the rest of his sorry life.

Zidane is no Angel, that's for sure.

A human being desperately attempting to live up to his God like status has on some occassions fallen foul of other slurs on his ethnic background and his consequential inability to control his explosive temper.

As we all know, it happened again last Sunday in the Greatest Show on Earth (Sorry Olympics, in my humble, you are a comendable 2nd only).

At the time of the incident, I sat on my couch in my Brighton flat and told SuperLisa that I thought he was and "Idiot" for doing what he did.

That opinion has not changed.

Zidane has tarnished his name and I'm sorry for him. I truly am.

He was a fool for acting as he did and given his reluctance to acknowknowledge the hoards of french who gathered to greet their so near heroes, he possibly knows it too.

I'm a passive Englishman and, as a result would (I hope) never react in the way that ZZ did.

Thing is, he was brought up in the desperately poor areas of Marseille and his DNA is very different to mine too.

I cannot condone his reaction but given the racial provocation, the fact that his mother had been taken seriously ill before the game and the terorrist insinuations of Materazzi (If true), I am quite sure that there are 100s of thousands of decent people in this world, which under those circumstances would sadly act in a equivalent way.

Fairwell Zidane. It's been a pleasure