Ironically, I brought the world of nasty
football injuries to my public yesterday (15th September)
and low and behold, Luke Shaw got on the end of a rough tackle and
he's now out of business. Not pretty and very sad for him having made his mark at club and national level.
I also mention the great Ron Springett a couple
of days ago (14th September) and in the DTelegraph today,
his obituary revealed some great snippets about animals and
footballers, leading to injury also.
In 1962 during a World Cup
quarter-final against Brazil in Vina del Mar Chile, a black dog
wandered on to the pitch when Springett and the very famous and able
winger, Garrincha, tried to catch it. Jimmy Greaves came to the
rescue, got down on all fours, attracted the dog and grabbed the
beast, when it relieved itself on the England “fox in the box”.
The Brazilians saw the animal as a lucky mascot winning 3-1 and
Garrincha adopted it, Greavsie was less impressed.
Another hazard in Chile apparently were
venomous spiders, so Springett and England captain, Johnny Haynes,
for fun, bought some fake arachnids from a joke shop. They were found
by the players in their hotel beds, but one of the “toys” was
actually moving, which prompted the England captain to run out of the
hotel to the training pitch where he was bitten by a dog. Not
Garrincha's!!
Springett was not shocked by the
creature, being he was short sighted, he saw it, but he found
floodlighting a problem when in goal, as he was susceptible to long
shots, which cost him his place in the England team, after letting in
5 goals under lights against France in 1963!!
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