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Anorak News | Three Chairs For England

Three Chairs For England

by | 17th, June 2004

‘IT’S long been a bugbear of the English sporting hierarchy that so many of the sports in which the English excel are not part of the Olympic sphere.

‘Will mummy kiss it better?’

Where is snooker in the pantheon of sporting excellence? And why is there no darts arena being constructed in Athens?

At least the Portuguese have given the English enough beer on the Algarve to enable them to smash the place up and engage in what commentators routinely call the English disease.

Having calmed their pre-match nerves with a dozen or so pints of extra-strength lager a man, imbibed under a merciless sun, a group of English hooliganistas set about their sport.

The Times looked on as the signal to start the game – “It’s the Germans!” – was given, the customary call for Englishmen to grab hold of a plastic chair, take a firm grip on a bottle neck and start to look angry.

But first a song. “England ‘Til I Die,” screamed a man with a bulldog tattooed on his chest. “No Surrender To The IRA,” sang another. “There Were Three German Bombers,” came a third.

Here was Eurovision in action – although the only entrants were the English.

But just as the English were getting into the swing of things, the Portuguese riot police stepped in.

The Telegraph says that running battles ensued as police fought with a rampaging mob (or team) hurling those prerequisite plastic chairs and bottles.

A dozen arrests were made, and the Telegraph tells us who they were.

“These were not ill-educated and feckless young football fans from broken homes”, it says, “but studious achievers from comfortable middle-class homes as well as married men in settled jobs.”

Cripes! These idiots are the Telegraph’s target audience. And just look at the state of them – a drunken, beer-spattered bunch of narrow-minded, xenophobic berks, hooked on the war and blessed with a herd mentality.

There’s John Jackson, a university graduate, described by his tearful mum as a “quiet lad”. And John Parkes, an ancient history student and said by his mum to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And Andrew Williams, whose mum says how he’s been “brought up with a strong sense of right and wrong”.

And the pick of this mum-loving bunch is Jack Hobbs, who earns the paper’s Victor Ludorum for his part in last night’s sport.

Jack’s from Oxfordshire, where he lives in a £750,000 home with his mum and dad, and is described as a “lovely boy”.

And that’s dad, Michael, a consultant psychiatrist and psychotherapist who also lectures at Oxford University. How proud he must be of his boy, as are we all!

Move over Tim Henman, Oxford and England have a new sporting hero – and he’s got a plastic chair…’



Posted: 17th, June 2004 | In: Broadsheets Comment (1) | TrackBack | Permalink