The 18 most unforgettable team photos of all time

DAVID Cameron has played down rugby international Manu Tuilagi’s ‘bunny ears’ gesture as ‘a bit of fun’, and accepted an apology from the player after his impertinent gesture during the British Lions’ photo call at Downing Street.

Not the first time someone has messed around behind Dave’s back, however, and probably marginally less embarrassing for him than his trip to Manchester in his ‘hug a hoodie’ days…

But as team photos, go, Tuilagi’s prank is fairly small beer…

The Inappropriate Gesture

Aussie rules player Jarryd Blair apologised for his hand gesture after Collingwood’s NAB Cup grand final victory in 2011. “I accept that a hand gesture I made was careless and inappropriate,” he said afterwards.

High school track and field star Vince Furnier found himself in hot water during his second coming as rock star Alice Cooper. Warner Brothers decided that the line-up picture on the cover of his Love It To Death album required airbrush action to obscure Cooper’s ambiguous-looking thumb.

Moby Grape’s heavily hyped debut album is best known for Don Stevenson ‘flipping the bird’ in the line-up cover shot, which was removed from subsequent pressings.

The Wardrobe Malfunction

They say the tackle is disappearing from the modern game, and they may have a point. In the old days a succession of players were immortalised with their tackle hanging out of their shorts, including such luminaries as Dean Saunders (whose dangling testicle was airbrushed from Brighton’s line-up). And Harry Cripps has something interesting going on in the front row of this vintage Millwall line-up.

Such incidents were usually deemed accidental, but the same cannot be said of Sezgin Özhan, whose club VfvB Ruhrort-Laar banned him for ten weeks and reshot this picture. A spokesman for the German football authorities described him as “depraved” and that his antics would “stun children“.

The Germans certainly seem to have a problem with this sort of thing…

On a more subdued level, the troubled and misunderstood Mario Balotelli managed to annoy Italy team-mate Thiago Motta by interfering with his tie during the official team photo for Euro 2012.