WE HAVE A MIDFIELD GENERAL # 1

 

We have a midfield General

Who’s really completive and hard

But everyone that we play

Just think he’s a dirty bastard

BERT TRAUTMANN

 

Goalkeeper Bert Trautmann

Was from a different age

When topflight players

Were not spoilt and pampered

He didn’t live in a mansion

Or have a selection of sports cars

To get to work on match days

From his home in Stockport

To Maine road in Manchester

He had to catch two buses

INDUSTRIALISED SPORT

 

Sport was industrialised by the Soviet Union

To promote communism

And not the money hungry capitalist west

But it profited capitalism

THE VICTORIANS

 

The Victorians

Invented a lot of sports

Or if not invented,

Encouraged their development

As a means of instilling, fair play

Teamwork and discipline

Into the next generation

As way of training the youth

For life in the wider world

I don’t know how

The Victorians would view

The sportsmen and women of today

Not favourably I suspect

AMATEURISM

 

Amateurism, when participating

Was more important than winning

Well, that idealism has been lost

Because today it’s win at all cost

TRANSFER SURPRISE

I was surprised Mario Balotelli left City

Though it was surrounded in farce

I would have thought it more likely

That he’d disappear up his own arse

A MAN IN A HOT AIR BALLOON # 2

 

A Man in a hot air balloon

Has lost his bearings

As he slowly floated by

 

He looks down below

And shouts to a man

“Hello, Where am I”?

 

“Well you tell me mate”

The man shouted back

“You have a better view than I”

A MAN IN A HOT AIR BALLOON # 1

 

A man in a hot air balloon

Has lost his bearings

As he slowly floated by

 

He looks down below

And shouts to a man

“Hello, where am I”?

 

“Are you completely mad?”

The man shouted back

“You’re floating in the sky”

 

BERNHARD CARL "BERT" TRAUTMANN, OBE (22 OCTOBER 1923 – 19 JULY 2013)

 

We have just seen the passing of a true sporting legend.

Bert Trautmann was born and bred during the toughest of times to be a german, during the inter-war years.

During the second world war he fought for three years as a paratrooper on the Eastern Front, where he was awarded five medals one of which being the Iron Cross.

But it was towards the end of the war that he was transferred to the Western Front where he was captured by the British.

He spent his captivity in a prisoner-of-war camp in Lancashire at Ashton-in-Makerfield, where he worked on the land until his release date in 1948.

At that point Trautmann refused repatriation, and chose instead to settle in Lancashire continuing to work on the land as a farm labourer.

In his spare time he played as a goalkeeper for his local football team St Helens Town. Where his performances brought him to the attention of First Division side Manchester City for whom he signed in October 1949.

However in a City that suffered terribly at the hands of the Luftwaffe the club's decision to sign a former German paratrooper sparked huge protests.

But through his performances he won over all but the hardest hearts and was accepted,

It was in 1956 that Bert Trautmann entered football folklore when he played for Man City in the FA Cup Final against Birmingham City and played the last 17 minutes of the match with a broken neck on the way to winning the cup.

He continued to play for Manchester City until his retirement in 1964 after making 545 appearances for the club.

In 2004 he was honored with the Order of the British Empire (OBE).

SHOT IN THE BACK - SIDE

 

It was in the buttock apparently

That a footballer has been shot

Although from the papers you may

Believe it or believe it not

As this was the way of reporting

The event that they preferred

“Adjacent to the players tunnel

An explosive incident occurred”

A NIGHT OF DISAPPOINTMENTS

It was a disappointing night for me on many levels, but I’ll come to that shortly, let me first set the scene.

It was the Second leg of the round of 16 tie between Manchester United and Real Madrid.

The tie was finely balanced at 1 – 1 after the first leg with United having the advantage of a precious away goal.

But Real Madrid having the enviable record of having scored in every away game in the competition could quite easily wipe that advantage out.

United took the lead early in the second half and things were looking good and then came the first of the disappointments after 56 minutes Nani is inexplicably sent off for dangerous play and the referee has gifted the match to Madrid.

So obviously I was disappointed that we lost, first and foremost but I was also deeply disappointed that the finely balanced game wasn’t allowed to unfold before a spellbound audience due to inept officiating.

But the sending off, ridiculous as it was, was not the worst of it.

After all poor refereeing decisions have always been part of the game and always will be until FIFA drags football into the 21^st century and finally submits to calls for video reviews as all the other major team sports have.

 

After the game the disappointments continued when as if to rub salt into the wounds of United fans we were subjected to former United player Roy Kean’s post match analysis.

In which he vehemently defended the referee in a rant that was completely at odds with the presenter, Adrian Chiles, and his fellow pundits Lee Dixon and Gareth Southgate.

 

Finally to end this night of disappointments came the biggest disappointment of them all was when Sir Alex declined to speak to the media and denied us an even more volatile episode than the usual purple faced post-match rant.