AM of that generation that uses rap as a verb rather than as something to listen to while our low-slung breeks show our pants to the world.

 

Rap is one of the most treasured words of the sports reporter. It is an energetic, exotic beast that always has a home in the mind of the fitba' scribbler. The wildly enthusiastic rap has its playmates in hit out and blasted. It has its bigger, more rarely seen brother of lambasted.

These words are only comfortable on the page of a newspaper, most at home in the sports pages. No one in the real world uses them.

For example, how did you react when the laddie mistook the accelerator for the brake and ploughed through the gardenias as if he was Boudicea in a chariot pulled by the joint-favourites for the Derby?

"Oh, I hit out at him, blasting him for his last-minute blunder and rapping him for his indiscipline at the vital moment. He was on the swally, too, so he is up before the beaks on Monday. I am laying down the law on this one but he is no bad boy, just daft."

This, then, is manager speak as conveyed by me and the mates.

This specialist language has its ideal setting in the aftermath of a narrow, controversial defeat. Football produces these occasions in the way that eating curry with one's fingers after a 12-hour shift at Dalmarnock Sewage Works throws up gastro-intestinal issues.

The post-match interview by journalists in these situations is the stuff of back-page legend. In my experience, there is a protocol to these events. First there has to be some obvious injustice. Second, the manager is allowed to ramble on about lack of connectivity at the transition phrase or his side's inability to capitalise on an overload on the flanks. A hack - one versed in the skill of subtly asking a question that is part gentle inquiry, part sympathetic observation - then points to the moment in the match where the manager's central defender was beaten up by three of the opposition players and sent off for sustaining a blood injury. Said defender also received the bill for subsequently cleaning the plastic pitch.

The journalist posits the theory that this may be just a tad unfair. This should provide the same reaction from the manager as taking a cosmic axe to an atom.

This is a worldwide phenomenon. Louis Van Gaal, one of the great responders, has filled back pages in Spain, Holland, Germany and now England. He has been doing this for years, basically ever since he discovered his large forehead was just short of satisfying Heathrow's search for a third runway.

He was in fine form after a defeat against Chelsea last week. He produced an interview for the BBC so smeared in huffiness and puerile petulance that one was surprised he did not leave the interview in his pedal car.

The Scottish Cup semi-finals produced two splendid spats but only two managers came up with the real goods. Alan Stubbs and Peter Houston are still trying to have the last word on the Hibs-Falkirk semi-final.

But Ronny Deila and John Hughes were disappointing after their semi-final. There are only two things on earth that can be seen from the moon: the Great Wall of China and the Josh Meekings handball.

But Ronny was as measured as a bespoke coffin. He pointed out that there were so many officials in attendance that one would have thought this was a referees' conference rather than a semi-final. But he did not blast or lambast.

Similarly, Yogi said it was a penalty and expressed gratitude for a piece of good fortune. The hit outs, blasts, raps, and lambasts have, instead, followed the Celtic statement and that by the SFA compliance officer.

It made me, somewhat mischievously, hanker for the days of Neil Lennon and Sir Walter of Smith.

The former Celtic manager's observations on a refereeing cock-up would be labelled a rant. But they were precisely delivered, sometimes at dictation speed in carefully modulated tones.

Sir Walter of Smith had a crisper style. He had his message. He delivered it. Any impertinent interruptions from the press were met by a cold expression. I once asked him a cheeky question so that his icy stare reduced the swelling on my arthritic knee.

After Lenny and Sir Walter had their say, one would retire to a media room - the official designation is an area where phones will not work and no internet connection is available - to clatter out my mince with all the enthusiasm of Liberace playing his last number in the Riviera Hotel, Las Vegas, before judging Mr Universe.

There is always a strange postscript to this. As soon as the manager's words are reported, there is an outcry declaiming them as bad losers. That, of course, misses the point that perennial winners are always bad losers.

It also fails to pick up on a very human trait. Imagine your carefully-prepared lesson, your presentation to the boss, your very pitch at job security, even perhaps history, had been derailed by incompetence from someone else that was both obvious and irreversible?

Don't know about you but I would be lambasting so much the subsequent damage to the immediate landscape would make the Grand Canyon look like a pitch mark.