Cockerel & Bull Story

‘AS things stand, the only place Leeds United are marching onto is the first division and administration.

‘Get two big oeufs, comme ca…’

However, manager Peter Reid is marching onto the job centre, although with around a £1m pay-off in his hands it might be more of a slow amble, taking in a Caribbean winter break and a nice meal on the way.

Marching the other way is Paul Hart. Well, he might be, since his is the name the Independent links with the now vacant manager’s post at Elland Road.

The other option, as cited in the Telegraph, is for Leeds to return to pastures old and hire George Graham, who led the team before David O’Leary.

But Hart’s name crops up again, and the paper reminds us that he used to play for the club and says it would only cost Leeds £200,000 in compensation to prise him away from his current tenure at Nottingham Forest.

It’s pretty amazing to think that a club crippled by debt would even consider paying such an amount to get a new manger. But this is Leeds, and what’s a couple of hundred grand when you’re almost £80m in the red?

While things go from worse to terrible for Leeds, Team England are looking forward to their Rugby World Cup semi-final against France.

“It’s a little perplexing at the moment,” says the team’s coach, Clive Woodward, of the English performances of late. “We did look a bit slower compared to the Welsh team.”

But someone not slow to the pitch is Bernard Laporte, the France coach, who is taking up the cudgel the Australians and South Africans have used to beat England with of late.

“A lot of people have seen how Mike Tyson fights,” says the bespectacled Frenchman. “It’s doesn’t mean they will get in the ring and beat him.”

But before Ben Cohen chews someone’s ear off, Laporte would like to endear himself to the whingeing Aussies with some more anti-English rhetoric.

“Most people hate them [the English],” says Laporte. ‘Personally I don’t have much love [for them], but one has to accept that they are often the best in business or in sport.”

Although the French do make a nice omelette and the Australians are very good at moaning…’

Posted: 11th, November 2003 | In: Back pages Comment | TrackBack | Permalink