Some of you have undoubtedly read about the riots in Manchester following the UEFA Cup Final between Zenit St Petersburg and Rangers.

As a Rangers fan, first and foremost, I have absolutely no complaints about the result of the game. Zenit was the better team and fully deserve having its name inscribed on the cup.

But it's the attitude of a minority of Rangers supporters (the estimation is between 120,000 and 200,000 fans were in attendance, and around 200 got violent) which will carry the headlines from now until the football season finishes.

Let me first absolutely condemn the behaviour of any of the fans who got violent. There is no excuse for your actions. You are scumbags and Rangers would be a much better club without your "support".

But I believe there's another social problem which may have contributed to the violence and one which will may be overlooked in the post-mortem - alcohol.

Many of those who travelled to Manchester without a ticket would have stepped out of their transport yesterday and headed straight to the pub or the supermarket to stock up on their liquid refreshments.

By the time lunchtime came around, many would have been blootered (to coin a Scottish word) and, with the game kicking off at 7.45pm local time, it's likely the majority of fans in the city centre were inebriated to some degree.

It's at that point people need no excuses to start acting like idiots.

I've seen this first hand. I once grabbed a very drunk Rangers fan and threatened to get the police on him because he was trying to break seats at the ground of one of Rangers' biggest rivals, Aberdeen, as well as acting violently towards an old man.

On one occasion (a New Year's Day fixture between Celtic and Rangers at Ibrox) I even broke my personal "no alcohol before a game" rule and swigged six pints of lager before kick-off.

The result was I couldn't remember Celtic scoring and I left the ground believing we had won the game. When you've got 50,000 screaming football fans, this is much easier said than done.

The thing is, alcohol and sport in Scotland have long shared a violent history (and that's not even touching on the issues of players and their alcohol problems, like Gazza).

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, football violence was a huge issue in Scotland. The 1980 Scottish Cup Final was undoubtedly the low point when Rangers and Celtic fans invaded the pitch and had running battles, all live on television.

One of the things done to avoid a repeat was the banning of alcohol in all football grounds, as well as denying those who looked drunk access.

In hindsight, the same should have applied to the gatherings of fans in Manchester yesterday.

The supermarkets should have been stripped of alcohol, and any fans drinking in a public area should have been removed. It MAY have stopped the worst from happening.

Of course, there are always a few idiots who need no excuse or provocation to act up, so it may have had no effect! That's the thing about opinions, they're like. . . Wait, I think you get the point.

I realise what I've written may be seen by some as somehow giving those who acted appallingly an excuse, but it's not. These people chose to drink to excess so it's solely down to them.

In these circumstances, sometimes it's best to deny the majority to stop the minority, even though it goes against my principles of freedom for people to do what they like.

In the meantime, I'll be hanging my head in shame like all decent Rangers fans.

One of the amazing thing is I haven't seen this kind of behaviour in New Zealand.

I actually believe New Zealand society has a greater problem with alcohol than Scottish society (a la the "It's not what we drink, it's how we drink" campaign) but it never, in my observation, manifests itself in drunken rampages at or near sports grounds.

Okay, there have been occasions when the terraces at Eden Park have gotten a little rowdy (usually about six hours and 10 beers into an ODI), but nothing that requires the use of riot-gear.

I guess there are things to be thankful for.

Incidentally, in amongst all the repercussions and finger pointing, Scottish football lost another legend.

Sport sure has a way of kicking us in the testicular region.

Mere hours after the disgrace in Manchester, Tommy Burns died after a battle with skin cancer.

Tommy, a Celtic legend and one-time Scotland Assistant Manager, was often lampooned by comics and Rangers fans because of his soft-spoken style, but was a football man through and through.

He may have played for Rangers' biggest rivals, but thankfully the majority of fans are able to put historic rivalry behind us to pay tribute to a man who gave everything he had for the club he loved.

To put this into New Zealand rugby terms, what he did was the equivalent of playing 100+ Super Rugby games, playing for the All Blacks, coaching in Super rugby and then being assistant coach to the All Blacks.

He'll be sadly missed in Scottish football.

What do you think about the mixture of alcohol and sport? When there's been a history of trouble should alcohol be banned? Can you see parallels between what happened in Manchester and anything you’ve witnessed in New Zealand?

I'd love to hear your thoughts.