The Pub Bore
‘THE world has heard more than enough from George Best to last many lifetimes and the only people left who could care less what he thinks are the newspapers.
| ”Buy me a shandy and I’ll sing you a song” |
A genius of a football player he may have been, but Best is now the archetypal pub bore.
And while all the regulars take their pints, move away and ignore him, papers like the Mirror are happy to buy him another drink and listen to his ramblings.
This mornings topic is the same as every other mornings topic from the celebrity drunk how things were better in his day.
Thats what children do throw food, he says of last Sundays Old Trafford bust-up. Thats not fighting. We were real men in our day we would have chinned them.
It is a measure of how desperate the Mirror is for a back-page lead that they would devote so much space to this kind of beery nostalgia.
Even the Star struggles to beef it up into a story, preferring to lead on the post-mortems that followed the crowd trouble at Stamford Bridge on Wednesday.
But the main victim, Chelseas Serb striker Mateja Kezman, who was left with blood pouring down his face after being hit by a coin thrown by a West Ham fan, is not playing ball.
It was just a small accident, he says. It was a really English game and I love that passion, but its nothing like a derby in Belgrade Belgrade is crazy.
No doubt the Serbian equivalent of the Daily Mail is in a permanent state of outrage at the state of the game.
Is it coming back? it asks of the menace of hooliganism after two games this week were marred by crowd trouble.
The answer, it appears, is no arrests at English league grounds fell 10% last season, an average of 1.62 arrests per game.
And Premiership games are the least violent, with trouble seeming to increase as the standard of football drops.
After all, youve got to do something to liven up a wet Wednesday night watching Shrewsbury Town.
And the Star reports that the police and FA are to go even harder after the yobs, handing out three-year banning orders to any troublemaker identified on CCTV footage.
Meanwhile, back in a pub somewhere in the Surrey countryside a jaundiced looking man is telling anyone who will listen how in his day blah, blah, blah…’
Posted: 29th, October 2004 | In: Back pages Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
