MY pal Joe works in oil.

He is an industrious sardine who just won't take a place in a can lying down. His experience at wriggling in tight situations was honed on the terracings of old where men were packed so closely together it was like a Moonie version of a mass civil partnership.

These were times when the space was so cramped that, after 90 minutes pressed up against him at Hampden, I was the first to diagnose Joe's varicose veins. We stood in conditions of such appalling squalor that Joe, an operative at Dalmarnock sewage works, often headed home believing he had just completed an overtime shift without the overalls.

We are both of the generation which graduated to the plastic bucket seat and toilets that were not just a wall with a gutter. I remember the first time I saw a wash basin in a football ground. There was a gathering of punters staring in the bemused manner of Amazonian Indians confronted for the first time with an airport check-in.

My career as a football fan also covers the period when I walked the deserted veldt of the uncovered end of Annfield in deepest Stirling where, after a day's trek, one could come across another supporter marching in the opposite direction. We would share provisions, advise each other of watering holes and head off in different directions - anything to avoid what was happening on the patch of plastic turf to one side of us.

These encounters of the extremely close kind are part of my history, part of my credentials as a football fan. I am now paid to go to matches but my past is that of a fan. It is why I have no hesitation in saying some fans have the same effect on me as a prostate examination made by a doctor wearing a celebration foam finger that has been left in the fridge.

I refer not, dear reader, to the cyber fan. There is a column to be written about him/her. But not this one. This is a column about the fan in his/her natural habitat and the way in which they should be addressed by football players.

I have noticed of late an increased tendency for supporters to goad footballers with gesture or word when said player approaches the stands to retrieve a ball for a corner or shy.

The players in these circumstances adopt the same attitude the sports editor has when I plead to be taken off the treadmill that produces most of the power for The Herald's presses: that is, they stare off into the distance, do not engage in any conversation and kick a spherical object very hard. In the players' case, a ball. In the sports editor's case, my napper.

This must stop. Not the treadmill. But the abuse of players when approaching the sideline.

My proposal is that every footballer should be allowed Un Cantona every season.

When a demented fan insults the player's family, body shape, ability, sexual preference and the provenance of his children, the footballer should be allowed to approach the match official and declare: "Je demande que j'utile mon Cantona." This could be put on a card for the hard of thinking.

The referee would then halt the game and the maligned player would point out his target to the fourth official (it would give him something to do) then launch himself into the crowd, picking out the malevolent fan.

Un Cantona would last for precisely one minute and then the ref would blow his whistle, allowing ambulance crews to move in to clear up the debris.

The player would then pick pieces of pie - and other unspecified dods of meat - from his studs and the game could proceed with at least one moron silenced.

Now, there will be those who protest that Un Cantona would bring licensed violence into the football ground.

I would answer this by saying (a) yes, and (b) you would just love to see it, wouldn't you? Of course, Un Cantona would only have to be used once before the imbecilic fan stopped making obscene gestures and despicable comments to players. The loudest are rarely the bravest, after all.

And if, dear reader, you want to protest at these witterings, I must issue a warning. I have applied to the National Union of Journalists for Un Cantona for columnists.