ENGLAND'S sporting reputation has been badly damaged in recent years by the behaviour of some so-called football fans.

The violence in Marseille during the 1998 World Cup and in Belgium during Euro 2000 dealt a major blow to the campaign to eradicate thuggery from the game.

The hooligans were back in the headlines, despite the best endeavours of the powers-that-be to keep them under control, and England's name was again blackened.

To lay the blame for the problems at the hosts' doors - as some apologists have tried to do over the years - is to miss the point.

There are arguments, too, which suggest it is wrong to damage the civil liberties of people who have not committed a criminal offence.

In many instances that's true. But English thugs, who believe that violence is an acceptable way to express national pride, must not be allowed to roam through foreign lands creating havoc as they go.

The residents of Brussels and Athens are entitled to live in cities which do not become war zones when England's fans descend on them.

That's why today we applaud the first large-scale use of new powers in the Football Disorder Act to ban hundreds of suspected hooligans from leaving our shores for tomorrow's England World Cup qualifying game in Greece.

Such radical solutions, combined with the work of the National Criminal Intelligence Service's football unit and the Greek police, should go a long way to preventing more shame being heaped on England's name.

Large numbers of fans flew out to Greece yesterday and, so far, there have been no reports of any trouble.

Those supporters who make the journey have a duty to behave as ambassadors for this country - just as Scottish fans have done over the past decade wherever they have travelled.