TO boldly go and all that. The diarist was saddened to hear of the demise the other week of NASA’s Mars Opportunity rover, that intrepid, robotic explorer which ventured forth into the outer boundaries of the habitable zone in its pursuit of new life forms. It’s a bit like taking the editorial pool car to an Airdrie game.

After 16 years of sterling endeavour on the Red Planet, Opportunity was lost amid the tumult of a martian dust storm. Back on planet earth, meanwhile, slack-jawed Celtic fans who invaded the Rugby Park pitch almost led to celebrating Hoops players being lost in an alien s*** storm. Well, that’s what it looked like anyway.

But back to our brave little rover. As its time on Mars neared its end, and that aforementioned dust storm enveloped the scene and choked out all the light, Opportunity sent a final, emotional message back to the dewy-eyed NASA boffins saying, “my battery is low and it’s getting dark.”

Apparently, those tend to be the same words the SFA compliance officer uses when rewinding and repeating clips of Rangers from an episode of Sportscene on her laptop. It’s been a lively old week in Scottish fitba, with the usual mooings that echo like a herd of cows finding out they’ve just been condemned to a lifetime of celibacy. Rangers MD Stewart Robertson had a right good go at the unfairness of everything with regard to disciplinary protocols while the Gers gaffer, Stevie Gerrard, claimed the club had been “over-analysed” this season.

Judging by the Rangers performance against St Johnstone last Saturday, however, you could have put Steven Davis in a petri dish below a microscope and still not witnessed anything worth analysing under laboratory conditions. Brassed-off Robertson backed proposals to introduce VAR into Scottish football. According to the more paranoid sections of the blue half of Glasgow, though, it’s already here. VAR? Why, it’s the Vendetta Against Rangers. Aye, right . .

*IN a week when slow play in golf was on the agenda again, they will at least get their skates on in the forthcoming Baikal Ice Golf Championship in Siberia. Held on the 80cm thick frozen stuff of Lake Baikal, competitors could encounter chittering temperatures of minus 20. That’s still not as frosty as the reception the golf writers get when they ask for a word from oor Monty after he’s skittered a two-footer by the cup to miss the cut by a shot.

The Herald:

*WHO’D be a referee eh? The men in the middle here in Scotland have been taking more flak than a B52 bomber. It’s even got to the point again where folk are talking about bringing in whistlers from foreign countries to officiate the domestic rough and tumble. “Foreign countries?,” said a colleague. “I always thought oor refs were from another bloody planet anyway.

*IN an effort to make the Olympics “more urban”, breakdancing has been proposed for inclusion at the Paris Games in 2024 after a successful appearance at the Youth Games last year. Sadly, squash, which has been campaigning for inclusion since Zeus was a boy, failed again and is now behind shove ha’ penny, carrot whittling, coppicing, rhythmic sock darning and synchronised shadow puppetry in the Olympic pecking order.

*STAYING with squash, and Malaysian great Nicol David has announced that she will retire at the end of the season. The 35-year-old, an eighttime world champion, is one of the greatest players of all time and was world No.1 between 2006 and 2015. “My mind and body have battled to stay at the top for such a long time that I feel I only have this last big push left,” she said.

Squash, of course, came with royal approval. As the Queen gave birth to Prince Charles back in 1948, the Duke of Edinburgh wiled away some of the hours playing squash with his private secretary. “He looks like a plum pudding,” said the Duke. And that was his observation about the baby Prince not his secretary after a vigorous best of five.

*BLAME it on the bogey? Cheetah’s rugby player Nico Lee has been banned for 13 weeks after he “cleared the contents of his nose on to the face of an opposing player” in a PRO14 match against Connacht last weekend.

Lee was reported by the Citing Commissioner for his actions which saw him unleash a torrent of snotters on to the face of Connacht flanker, Colby Fainga. “The player’s actions have no place in the game,” read a statement from the disciplinary panel who were clearly snot amused.

Compared to the bawdy shenanigans at the Howe of Fife rugby club, where lively initiation ceremonies include bottles being inserted into various apertures, clearing one’s nose in another person’s face is the equivalent of a genteel kiss on the cheek.