Tuesday 10 February 2015

AGE CATCHES UP WITH THE BASEMENT, BALL BOYS AND THE BARBER

Having recently given you the league table for long ball “merchants” in the Premier League, it was made public recently that Tottenham fielded the youngest squad in the PL last weekend, when they won the North London derby:- Spurs weighed in at 24 years 37 days. Looking at the average age for squads in the PL at the time of the transfer deadline, Newcastle had the youngest at 25 years 30 days, Man Utd, Southampton, Arsenal, Liverpool , Everton, appear in the next half dozen places. Oldest is Manchester City at 28 years and 80 days, with Palace, Stoke, WBA, QPR, Leicester, Hull and Villa in the oldest ranks.
On the theme of age, as I was recovering from Fiona's Pilates session this morning at the gym, I was towelling down and watching on the changing room TV,“Real Lives reunited” on day time BBC.
It covered two past events, the tragic sinking of the Machioness Thames party boat and the World Cup Final in 1966. It found several of the ball boys who helped return the ball to England and Germany during our famous 4-2 victory at Wembley. They shared a bottle of champagne at the new Wembley and reminisced about the fabulous day they experienced.
As I mention Wembley, I have to make you aware of the FA Historian, David Barber, known on their website www.The FA.com as “The Barber”. He makes it his job to gather historic information about the national game and also has ground hopped to over 6500 matches in his ife, mostly grass roots. You can get him on Twitter (https://twitter.com/thebarberfan) and will soon find out that he is due to retire soon, handing over his spectacular job to some fortunate “youngsters”, who are lucky to inherit his legacy. I first met the Barber early in the early 1970s when he travelled with Charles Hughes to FA XI representative games.
In his leisure, David is going to continue his past interest in “underwater photography”, from which some of his photos have been published.

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