It was the Hillsborough Disaster of 1989 and the subsequent Taylor Report which delivered the coup de grace to Thatcher’s foray into football. The axing of a dud idea was welcome, but it should not have taken 96 deaths for it to have happened. CCTV had already turned the tide against stadium violence, and by the early 1990s, football fighting was just no longer a cool thing to do. Cards would have made no difference.

The Iron Lady resigned in 1990 and Moynihan scuttled away into the shadows after losing his seat at the 1992 General Election, only briefly reappearing in court in 1996 to claim the title ‘Baron Moynihan’ after the death of his brothel-keeping half-brother. Football Delhi Bazaar Satta King fans were glad to see the back of him.

Perhaps the Celtic associations do have nothing to fear from the passing novelty of a UK team, but being clearly petrified of the unthinkable, they have every right to refuse to participate.

What Moynihan the BOA man fails to understand is that Olympic football has so little prestige compared to the real prizes in the game that the three smaller British associations cannot allow a minor competition they never enter anyway to risk ending their existences.

a man with apparently no knowledge of the sport really should back off. Football decisions should be down to football people, and Moynihan is not one of us. If no association apart from the FA wishes to participate in the UK eleven then we can all live with that.

One man who knew how to deal with Moynihan was Brian Clough. Cloughie referred to him as ‘The Miniature for Sport’ and brought a puppet of him onto television to ridicule. When Moynihan charged onto the field to congratulate Britain’s gold medal-winning hockey team at the 1988 Olympics, Clough judiciously pointed out how Moynihan could never again lecture football fans about pitch invasions.

When Lord Justice Taylor killed the ID cards off once and for all, Cloughie concluded,

“I would like to thank Mr Moynihan, and anyone who is above him…which is most of us.”