The old stadium was packed to the flaming rafters. Quite literally. A perfect May day for football had begun as a sponsor's dream.

Sun shining and the two biggest teams in the country lining out in the showpiece match of the season, the 1985 Bass Irish Cup Final. Glentoran v Linfield.

As was his Cup Final day ritual, my late, great and sorely missed mate Brian Houston, PR man extraordinaire for Bass Ireland and cheer leader for football in darker days than these, was up at The Oval early.

Checking his advertising hoardings were strategically placed in line with the camera positions and making sure the hospitality was just right for the first visit to his pride and joy of his big bosses, and bankrollers, from Tennents in Glagsow.

And it all went exceedingly well... til the copiously wined and dined Scottish dignitaries took their seats in the Glentoran directors' box.

The BBC cameras weren't trained on the Tennents branding, as they'd hoped, but on the most bizarre sight I've seen on a football field — and there's been a few.

A demented blue-painted piglet being crazily chased around the pitch by stewards while a live cockerel, the emblem of Glentoran, haughtily strutted the touchline.

Even worse, to the horror of Housty and his bigwigs, the obligatory riot broke out on the far side with one crowd up in the rafters of the Oval stand, raining down burning planks on the heads of their rivals below.

I remember phoning in the headline for Malcolm Brodie's Ireland's Saturday Night report - Pig Of A Match (below).

I looked up the shocking scenes again yesterday on YouTube and I don’t mean Mark Robson with hair and Dame Edna glasses.

Cops in full riot gear and helmets, powerless even with their plastic bullet guns, as they ducked a stone and bottle barrage. Referee Jackie Poucher struck on the head and needing treatment and somehow they got the game played.

It finished 1-1 and the cops at least kept the warring factions off the pitch.

Two years earlier and another Big Two final at Windsor, their Keystone colleagues, rightly sensing trouble brewing, deployed from the ground to the surrounding streets, with five minutes to go, in the forlorn hope of the keeping the Taliban hordes apart as they made their way home after another 1-1 draw.

Fat chance. With not a cop in sight, they swarmed over the fences and, again quite literally, fought a pitch battle in the centre circle, using corner flags as spears.

So you see, disorder on Big Two feast days is not the 2009 phenomenon indignant IFA chiefs would have us believe with their banning order on the next two scheduled Boxing Day encounters. Morgan Day 2005 anyone?

Poor Housty, summoned to Head Office in Glasgow all those years ago to explain why a reputable company should continue to lavish sponsorship money on the car crash that continues to be Northern Ireland football, disarmed them as only he could with typical humour.

"Sure I got us on the front page of every paper in the land, not to mention the main item on the TV news... what more do you want?"

In truth, Housty fought hard to keep the cash tap flowing for 20 years of the Bass Irish Cup, blighted by riots, controversy, IFA cock-ups and one cancelled Final, decided in the committee room.

He did so not just because he was a football man through and through but, like the rest of us, he believed the genuine, law abiding supporters in the majority abhorred the excesses of the knuckle-trailing Neanderthals habitually ruining a great day out and the reputation of a wonderful game.

And, like the rest of us, he despaired of anything meaningful ever being done to curtail them.

So, yes, the IFA were right to take a stance, draw a line, call it what you will, when they slapped their Boxing Day ban on the Big Two after another season of peace and goodwill was shattered on Christmas past.

But typical of the Windsor Avenue suits, they went about it the wrong way and for all the wrong reasons.

A salutory lesson needed to be taught, we were told. No argument there.

But beyond the posturing on the high moral ground lurks the

abiding impression that lesson was less about the behaviour of a few seat-hurling louts and more about reminding Linfield, Glentoran and indeed the whole of the Irish League exactly who runs football here. And it ain’t them.

As we all know, that gift is the treasured possession of our dear friends, the wee men from the junior leagues and will remain so as long as there are only 12 senior clubs to 1200 juniors.

And boy have they been flexing their muscle since their shop stewards at the IFA got shot of Howard Wells and his dreadful, reforming, modernising ways. They taught him and all. What was he thinking about, for heaven's sake, trying to turn the IFA into an efficient, properly administered and accountable organisation?

The message now having been delivered and the Big Two shown who's boss by the wee men, expect now the sentence to be suspended when it goes to appeal.

Thousands of decent, genuine fans can again look forward to their Boxing Day out, the Blues and Glens can again look forward to their biggest payday in hard times and honour will have been satisfied all round.

Except for one thing. The age old problem won't have gone away.

Fighting at football matches is so 1980s, why on earth do they still do it? Because they get away with it, that's why.

On one score at least, the IFA and the clubs they seek to put in their place are agreed. Likewise the soundbite politicos. Football grounds legislation is required to weed out, prosecute and ban the troublemakers.

But why do we need legislation when we've got the law of the land?

Because here is the thing I don't get.

If those chair-chucking idiots were to behave like that in a city centre nightspot, they'd be arrested, hauled before the courts and barred from the premises. So what's different about bad behaviour in football grounds that stops the police applying the full force of the law.

There does seem to be ambivilence where football and its decent followers is concerned.

A few years ago a Northern Ireland supporters club from Portadown e-mailed me to relate the sorry story of how they returned to their bus after an international game at Windsor to find every window in the vehicle shattered.

They phoned the police who didn't have anyone to send out. What were they to do?

Park it without a tax disc or outside a chippy next time and you can be sure it'll be safe, I replied.

For once I am in agreement with the IFA. There is only so much they can do to rid the game of the hooligan scourge and banning the Big Two from playing the biggest game of the year isn't the answer.

Windsor Park and The Oval need to be policed like Shaftesbury Square on a Saturday night with a zero tolerance approach to scumbags.

They don't bill late night bars for overtime so don't expect football to stump up either.

Maybe then, at long last, our football grounds would be safer, more hospitable places, the IFA President wouldn't have to worry on live TV about families not going to games and dear, old Housty, we'd know for sure, is resting easy.