A kick in the teeth for soccer standards!

 

A KICK IN THE TEETH 

FOR SOCCER STANDARDS!

 

 

FOR a bargain £2 this week I bought the 1960 autobiography of soccer gentleman Stanley Matthews from an antiques market in Kettering. 

For six times this sum gullible kids can waste their pocket money on a video nasty “starring” a moronic midfielder not worthy enough to clean the Maestro’s boots. 

Wimbledon Football Club owner Sam Hammam insulted the insect world when he dubbed Vinnie Jones “mosquito brain.” It’s a funny old game indeed when a so-called “hard man” is allowed to kick, spit and gouge his way to the top. 

The new video narrated by Jones is a compilation of atrocious tackles made by assorted midfield hatchet men, interspersed with inane interviews with former professionals from the last 30 years.

 

This former brickie first came to our notice in a famous photograph grabbing Gazza in the penalty area. Since then he has been sent off six times - one of them for head-butting an opponent! 

No tears should be said over the record £20,000 fine imposed on a talentless thug who has pocketed at least £200,000 in signing-on fees from clubs crazy enough to fork out hard cash for his dubious services. 

For his part in glorifying violence on the football field in his video (titled Soccer’s Hard Men) the Football Association handed Jones a suspended sentence for bringing the game into disrepute and told him to be a “good boy” for three years. That’s like giving Saddam Hussein a community service order. 

In Sir Stanley’s day, a player like Jones - who once threatened to rip off Kenny Dalglish’s ear and spit in the hole - would surely have been banned for life.

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OFF THEIR TROLLEYS?

SMITH on Saturday sympathises with those who oppose proposals to introduce a bus lane in Kettering town centre. 

But if road chiefs insist on going ahead with the controversial scheme, might I humbly suggest the lane should also be used by all pedestrians with prams, baby buggies and shopping trolleys? 

As anyone with bruised heals and ankles will tell you, some of these “pavement hogs” are faster than any Shuttle Bus - and twice as dangerous!

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TABLES THAT JUST DON’T ADD UP!

SOMEBODY, it seems, got their sums wrong when compiling this week’s shock league table of school exam results, which have been branded unreliable and misleading by head teachers. Perhaps the Government should me made to re-sit its GCSE in mathematics?

 

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(This column was originally published in the Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph on Saturday, 21 November, 1992)