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
Sport was industrialised by the Soviet Union
To promote communism
And not the money hungry capitalist west
But it profited capitalism
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, when participating
Was more important than winning
Well, that idealism has been lost
Because today it’s win at all cost
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
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
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”
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).
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”
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 21st
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.
I took the boys to the match
Down
the road on Saturday
I
take them to the home games
But
we never ever go away
They’re
only a conference side
About
mid table if we’re lucky
If
we manage a decent cup run
The
pundits call us plucky
Almost
numb with boredom
We
suffered a dull first half
The
ref fell over on his arse
So
at least we had a laugh
To
cheer the boys up a bit
I
took them to a burger bar
I
didn’t know how long we’d be
The
line didn’t seem that far
The
true concept of “fast food”
Seems
to have passed them by
As
we spent half time queuing
For
two hot dogs and a pie
I
sent the boys to the stands
Coming
over all paternal
I
queued on my own and missed
Two
goals after the interval
Back
in the stand with the boys
I
realized I’d got nothing for me
And
when I tied Josh’s shoelace
I missed goal number three
I
saw the last five minutes
Until
the final whistle blew
Still
at least we won the match
The
last time we only drew
Match
days are meant to be fun
I
must be totally off my brain
Halfway
home without a coat
It
starts to pour with rain
Forty
quid to see the match
Plus,
fast food and a program
Still
at least I spent the day
With
my boys Ben Josh and Sam
