This diarist has been called many things down the seasons. “Look, there’s that bastion of The Herald,” muttered a regular in the local.
Or words to that effect.
Praise doesn’t tend to be forthcoming in an industry that’s as hard-nosed as the Sphinx of Giza. As the sports editor noted while peering over his parapet, “from observing your efforts throughout the season, it’s clear to me that you’re doing the work of two men … Laurel and Hardy.”
Another fine mess eh? Talking of fines, there have been many punishments dished out to sporty folk over the years.
Legend has it that the Ancient Greek athlete Astylos of Croton made one false start too many in a diaulos race and had to forfeit his loin cloth. A brassed of Astylos immediately went to the very head of the Athenian Parliament to complain and, ahem, tabled his amendments.
In more modern times, Sir Alex Ferguson once fined his Aberdeen poacher John Hewitt for overtaking him in his car while Brian Clough docked Kenny Burns a hefty sum after the Nottingham Forest player committed the heinous crime of playing a square ball across his own 18-yard line.
Last weekend in Germany, meanwhile, the manager of RB Leipzig, Ralf Ragnick, unveiled a new punishment system for players who step out of line called the ‘Wheel of Misfortune’.
Instead of monetary fines, those who do wrong can now end up serving food in the canteen, buying gifts for the club’s employees or training in a tutu.
It could be worse. The Denver Broncos line-backer, Von Miller, regularly fell victim to the club’s hard-hitting ‘fart tax’. Miller’s intestinal urges cost him $15,000 in one season.
“I keep trying to tell them it’s not healthy if I just sit there and hold it in,” lamented Miller.
Strangely enough, that’s probably what the rabble rousing George Peat was thinking when he, er, dropped one about a certain club’s chairman this week. What did we say about another fine mess?
*A football fly on the wall documentary tends to be so up close and personal you can just about smell the liniment.
The diarist re-watched ‘There’s Only One Barry Fry’, that colourful insight into Fry’s stint at Peterborough as they lurched towards relegation.
“We need a miracle but they happen now and then,” he said to his players after another defeat. “Go on, get yourself dressed, have a beer and f*** off home.” That’s what the sports editor tends to say after I have submitted the diary.
*Ding ding. On this date in 1927, a rematch between world heavyweight title holder Gene Tunney and the former champion Jack Dempsey took place at Soldier Field in Chicago.
The skirmish became famous for a contentious episode when Dempsey floored Tunney only for the referee’s count to be delayed due to Dempsey’s failure to go to a neutral corner. The fight was known as the Battle of the Long Count.
Funnily enough, some football scribes recalling the last few weeks of Gordon Strachan’s increasingly crotchety reign as Scotland boss often mutter on about the Prattle of the Short Count.
Well, it sounded like count anyway ....
*The rough and tumble of Scottish fitba has always been a bit of a culture shock. It’s a bit like absorbing the Chopin Etudes one minute and then listening to Irene howling out Wind Beneath My Wings at the Oriental Bar karaoke night the next.
Hamilton’s new recruit, Delphin Tshiembe, is finding his feet in the domestic game and he has clearly adopted the kind of in depth sleuthing you’d get in a box set of Poirot DVDs.
“I have to do a lot of research and our technical analyst has given me clips to watch,” said the Congolese midfielder.
“Scottish football is what I imagined with people just killing it.” Is he talking about the SFA there?
*On yer bike. Denise Mueller-Korenek got pedalling this week and reached an average speed of 182.9 mph over the Utah salt flats.
She was towed along by a dragster at 100 mph before being released to pedal herself in its slipstream.
“It was a wild, crazy ride,” she said. “We weren’t supposed to go more than 175 mph.” The diarist must have missed that safety recommendation during the Cycling Proficiency Test back in ye day ...
*Have boots will travel. Edinburgh’s giant back row, Viliame Mata, has been reflecting on his switch from the archipelago of Fiji to Auld Reekie.
“I told my wife, ‘we’re going to Edinburgh’ and she asked me where it was,” Mata recalled. “I said, ‘I don’t know, we’re just going on the plane . . . but it’s close to London’.”
It’s probably closer than some of the airports Ryanair drop you off at.
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