often as possible during a match. “You can see I have a lot on my plate each week. Of course, the routine doesn’t always work. I’d be the greatest goalkeeper in the business if it did. “But I’m so superstitious now I don’t think I could play without first going through these preparations. And nothing discourages me, not even a seven-goal hammering. I remember one thinking it would be lucky to wear two odd gloves against Celtic at Parkhead. One was black, the other white. At half-time, as we were already three down, I decided the experience had been a flop. “I got out an old straight yellow pair. And, would you believe it, I lost FOUR goals in the second half!” Wayne Hubbard of Norwich HATS OFF TO ALAN Part one in a series of hilarious football incidents that probably won’t ever be repeated. This week, we focus on the world’s most superstitious footballer, former Scotland goalkeeper Alan Rough. In an article written by Alan Fraser in October 17’s Daily Mail, the former Partick Thistle and Hibernian shot stopper relives a viciously funny incident while representing his country in a match against Wales in 1985 that will leave you bereft of ribs: ”......in truth we were mucking about, as substitutes do at half-time. Actually, the Welsh Dragoon Guards were playing and we were trying to knock their hats off with a ball”.
E-MAILS CHRISTMAS WITH TONY ADAMS Dear Dannys, This article recently appeared in our local paper, the Newmarket Journal. It follows up a story on your show about Tony Adams being at Center Parcs over Christmas: YOUNG FANS GET TO PLAY BALL WITH SOCCER HERO Football fans in Mildenhall kicked off the New year with a surprise appearance from one of their football heroes. On New Years Day, four upper school boys were wandering past their school field when they noticed two men in training. One of the boys, an Arsenal fan, noticed that the men included Tony Adams, the Arsenal and England defender. He rushed over to confirm he was not dreaming and because he was wearing an Arsenal shirt, he and his friends were offered a game, which lasted nearly an hour. The Arsenal captain had been staying at Center Parcs for part of the Christmas break with the team fitness trainer, Tony Colbert, a former pupil of Mildenhall Upper School, whose parents live in Chestnut Close, Mildenhall. Before he went to see his parents Mr Colbert, 35, took a trip down memory lane to visit his old school and do some training with Adams. So Tony Adams would rather play on our school field over Christmas than at Highbury. Pamela Craig
G.S. Burgoyne of West Sussex SIX INCHER DANGEROUS ACTS Dear Dannys, On the subject of dangerous acts performed in one’s childhood, something that my friends and I did in our early teens was to stretch two pence pieces. You may be wondering how 13-year-old boys can stretch coins of the realm. Two words: British Rail. Close to our neighbourhood at the time was a railway line, and of course there is always a gap in the fence enabling members of the public to take short cuts. We used to fix one pence and two pence coins to the track with Blu-Tac - necessary as the vibrations of the track caused by the approaching train meant that the coin dropped off. As the train went over the coin it was gradually flattened and stretched, completely obliterating Her Majesty’s visage. The longer the train, the further the coin was stretched. We used to compete against each other to see whose coin was stretched the most. Call me irresponsible if you want, but we never tried it with anything thicker than two pence for fear of derailing the train. Mike Hobson of Melton Mowbray
Dannys, Two games that kept me happy at school: You may remember artificial sodium chloride molecules from the school’s science lab made from many polystyrene balls. One of the atoms removed from the model made the ball we used in a game called ‘molecular soccer’. There was a spare bit of corridor outside the music room at Wade Deacon Grammar School in Widnes with a superb playing surface. And, since it was at the end of the corridor, there was no through traffic. It enjoyed solid double doors between it and the rest of the school - an ideal stadium for good tournaments, especially when there was no music master. The problem came when, after a year, our sodium chloride was reduced to very few atoms. Did you ever play rugby with a six inch ruler? This was the ultimate in cheap games, and involved using a table and a ruler. No coins were involved. The players at either end of the table had to push the ruler back and fro, attempting to make the ruler stop partly hanging over the opposite edge. That scored you ‘a try’. To score ‘a conversion’, the other person had to make posts - forefinger and thumbs from both hands inverted - and the try scorer then had to hit the ruler over the crossbar. This, in my book, was much better than any coin game.
MOSHI, MOSHI
John Whitfield of Chorleywood
Dear F and G, The Japanese answer the phone with the words “moshi, moshi”, which are ONLY used when picking up the phone and at no other time.
MY FIRST TIME
Ian Gardner of Northampton HANDS OFF MY SISTER Dear Danny and Danny, I’ve been a long time listener of the show and, due to the fact that recently virtually all calls have involved sex, I feel I must contribute this story. One of my best mates was a member of his club’s successful youth team and played for England at his age group. The night his team won a big competition, I was invited to join the squad in a boozer five minute’s walk from the club’s famous ground. After many cold drinks had been consumed, I invited my friend, along with a more famous member of the team who has gone on to bigger and better things, to come back to my house as my parents were away. This player now scores regularly, but not as many times as he did with my younger SISTER that night. As I was drooling in a semi-coherent state downstairs, he’d managed to take a wrong turn and ended up disturbing her late night’s GCSE revision. I only found out about that the next day when I saw him sprawled naked across her floor with several reminders of the night’s events scattered around him. Being bigger than the tugboat, I ejected him from my house but not before I had emptied the contents of my bladder on his designer-label shirt. Ryan
Dear Dannys, Do you remember the first goal you ever scored playing football? I was aged about 4 or 5, and, er, playing football. Being that young, I didn’t get the ball much, but on that afternoon Robert Parkin squared the ball and I tucked it away past Patrick Gamble. James Bell was picking daisy chains again. David Hamilton GINOLIO Dear Dannys, An interesting game you can play with the name of foreign footballers is to translate them into their English sounding equivalent. For example, Jimmy Hill lookalike, Croatia’s Davor Suker, can be more easily pronounced as Dave Sugar. And France’s World Cup winning coach, Aimes Jacquet, is more easily described as Love the Jacket. Adding completely irrelevant letters to the surnames of players often helps to describe them better. Those annoying Neville brothers at Manchester United, as an example, should be referred to as the Snivells. Finally, asking your wife to name foreign footballers can also produce some interesting names. Mine refers to David Ginola as Ginolio (possibly his Brazilian cousin), and Gianluca Vialli as Tony Bungalees. Nigel Goddard