The woman was 60-ish, dressed smartly, with a refined Kentish accent, a warm smile and apparently completely out of place in a carriage heaving with rowdy English football supporters.

At first it appeared she had got on the wrong train at the wrong time.

Suddenly the raucous chanting started to get more menacing. One of the ringleaders, tattoos bristling, began banging his fists on the grill above him and pretty soon his mates joined in and the carriage was in danger of ending the journey in considerably more parts than it began.

The woman stood up, leaned over and tapped the ringleader firmly on the shoulder and shouted 'No'. Remarkably the lout stopped, even looked sheepish for an instant, and the rest of us shifted a little uneasily in our seats as we marvelled at the woman's pluck.

Until, that is, she sat down and immediately joined in with the next lusty chant of "No surrender to the IRA!" English football followers certainly come in a remarkable array of shapes and sizes.

Which is why it is no good the FA trying to suggest the violence, mass arrests, court hearings and deportations in the Algarve are not attached to football just because they did not happen within the confines of a stadium.

No, not all the thugs conform to the caricature of the yob you might find playing football on Brighton beach, bottle of lager in one hand, bull terrier on lead in the other, shaved head, fag in the corner of his mouth.

But, in a week in which Tony Blair, from the dispatch box in the House of Commons, highlighted the "shame" they bring on Britain, the one thing that characterises the vast majority of them is their rampant xenophobia.

One of the most repugnant chants here in Portugal suggests the singer would "rather be" of Asian origin than emanate from their opponents' country. It is sung by men, not all prone to violence, but who wear the flag of St George as if somehow it conferred the right to be superior.

"If it wasn't for the English you'd be 'krauts'," was another hurled last weekend at French supporters, who thankfully showed commendable sang-froid.

Even more popular, and this is in the cities and towns where as yet there has been no violence, is the song, accompanied by schoolboy mimes, which proclaims "There were 10 German bombers in the sky" and one by one the RAF shot them down.

It is trotted out so routinely and so proudly alongside 'Rule Britannia' that it makes you want to weep for youth with such a lamentably simplistic grasp of history, such obtuse logic and, most depressingly, such a disgraceful way of beating their opponents about the head with a stick they call patriotism. It is nothing of the sort.

It is out-and-out bigotry and racism. Did the men who died on D-day 60 years ago really lay down their lives so England football supporters could lay claim to their badges of honour while regularly drowning out the opponents' national anthem with jeers and whistling?

When Winston Churchill proclaimed "We will fight them on the beaches" could he have imagined that one day Englishmen would be taking the deeds of his heroes in vain as they misbehaved on the Algarve?

To travel with such pockets of 'supporters' is to be embarrassed for England. Yet so many of them, and the vast majority of supporters here are law-abiding, family-oriented and in search of nothing more than a fun experience, shake their heads, squirm in their seats and do nothing. Maybe that is the problem.

England's army of legitimate supporters should perhaps take a lead from the Scots. Once they had a fan problem, though not as widespread or as seated in xenophobia as the English.

It was eradicated from within, by groups of fans fed up of being tainted by the shame of their violent countrymen who faced down and shouted down the idiots.

True, it is easier said than done facing down a railway carriage of tanked-up, pumped-up, testosterone-fuelled bigots.

For a fleeting moment in a passing corner of Lisbon this week English football appeared to have a brief encounter with sanity in the shape of that 60-year-old woman. If only she had then kept mum.

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Pity we have to talk about hooliganism because Euro 2004 is shaping up into the most wide-open football tournament for years.

Who would have thought Greece would have beaten Portugal and drawn with Spain? Or Italy been held by Denmark? Or little Latvia almost shock the Czechs? Or England lose two goals in injury-time against France?

And yet there is one thing as inevitable as tax in your pay packet - come a major tournament, come a Germany team capable of winning it.

But for Ruud van Nistelrooy's late strike the Germans would have beaten Holland in a first game which brought to mind the words of Arsenal striker Thierry Henry last week.

"Never, ever worry for Germany," was Henry's advice. He meant: 'Always worry about Germany'.

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Brazil's Ronaldo was the one undeniable star of the World Cup in Japan, his goals winning the trophy for coach Luiz Felipe Scolari.

If only Scolari, now coach of Portugal, had more faith in his new Ronaldo, Manchester United's twinkle-footed winger.

The teenaged Ronaldo has played for a total of around 30 minutes over two games as a substitute in Euro 2004 so far and yet on each occasion has looked the most exciting player here.

His curtailed contributions might please Sir Alex Ferguson but if Portugal want to progress to the quarter-finals when they meet Spain on Sunday in what promises for passion to be an encounter to rival India v Pakistan at cricket then Scolari must be bold and give Ronaldo a start. He deserves it, so does the tournament.