For Your Amusement

Some signings turn out to be so bad they are unwittingly the most entertaining thing on the pitch

- Harry Pearson Column

There are rare moments in football when all the crowd’s bubbling frustration and frothing rage is transmuted into pure gold by the magic of a single man. Usually it requires impudent talent or sublime skill to effect the change, but every once in a while there comes one of those truly precious afternoons when a player produces a display of such fathomlessly cockeyed ineptitude he turns a rock face of jeering and scornful humanity into a happy, chortling and childlike jelly. This month I was privileged to be part of such scenes.

In the close season the home team had plucked a young striker from way down the pyramid. The manager had hailed his new signing as “the answer to our goal-scoring problems”. Watching him on his debut a friend concluded that this lad was not the answer, and that any goal scoring conundrums the club had would not have taxed a contestant on the opening round of an afternoon quiz show. “He seems to be made out of knees,” he said. Questioned on his pace and mobility he responded: “Well, put it this way, there’s moss growing on his north facing side.”

And so I went to see what the lack of fuss was all about. The new striker is a tall, rawboned, floppy haired lad with a head like a Dutch cheese and a tongue that protrudes when he’s thinking. He looks like the sort of big-hearted peasant who in a French film would work a double shift emptying septic tanks in the rain while the boss was round his house impregnating his fiancée.