Monkey Business No. 48 March 2000

A LOCAL ARTICLE FOR LOCAL PEOPLE

We'll have no trouble here

"You have to be at least a bit f****d up to support Pools in the first place." Or so me grandad reckoned, when I was 6 and I first went to the Vic.

Halifax: we have a bloke who is much too fat to be a ref giving them a penna. Shrewsbury: we have a bloke who is too old to be a ref not giving US a penna. The fat one sends Ginger Spice off on the one occasion he has ever TIMED a tackle correctly. The old one barely leaves the centre circle. Hull: (fortunately) we get the blind one. All too often we get the mad one (er that's Lynch by the way). I don't want to get all Keith Houchen here, but can't we at least have refs who look as if they haven't come off the wards at the General. Like ones who can move about a bit, and see, and other useful stuff?

That Uriah Rennie what did the Darlo game at least looked the part, especially when bollocking Gabbiadini & Hodgson.

Talking of Darlo, how sad were they on Sky? Georgie talking about the Premiership, and his new super-stadium. If you've got so much dosh George, how come all you've bought this season is a load of worms for the mudflats you call a pitch? You may be unbeaten at home this season but only 'cos the opposition spend the first half-hour working out how to get out of the trenches. It must be like re-enacting the Anglo-German Xmas Day game in no-mans land, over and over again. What's the point in a 25,000 seater stadium when you STILL can't even fill the Rink End seats?

Overheard at the Shrewsbury game "Come on Turner, make a double substitution. Take Freestone off twice." They say we all have at least one defining moment in our lives. I think poor Chris had his from the penalty spot at home to Southend.

One of the worst moments of the season was realising I was in the checkout queue in Asda behind a Pools player. It was only Rune Vindheim but I was praying he'd put that "next customer" thingy after his shopping so that my inadequate groceries didn't mingle with the food of the Gods. You could tell he was an overseas player 'cos he had pasta and veg and white meat, whereas true Shotton Axe Men like me and Tommy Miller can survive on Fruit Salad, Black Jacks, Refreshers and other chews.

I met Tommy's dad once. It was when he was a copper. I say met, actually he was sort of shouting "Come here" and I think I replied "Not blooming likely" or some other light-hearted colloquial term used in the mining industry. I think he laughed too. If you are by some chance reading this Tommy Snr. yes it was me that painted the red phone box at Fleming Field a nicer shade of white. I did it at three o'clock in the morning. I know I used gloss. Sorry. I was 13 for heaven's sake.

My parents had split up and I had discovered punk. ( * Mental note... check with Elvis Costello's Glasses if the first London punks in Hartlepool arrived for the cup game at home to Palace, or at the Eddie and the Hot Rods gig at the Borough Hall, in case it comes up on Who Wants to be a Millionaire).

In any event, when we was kids all we had to entertain US was shooting rats in the Brickyard Pond and the Pit Heap. Danger came in the form of playing footie on the Catholic schoolfield on the Sabbath, (priests have hard hands), or waiting hours for the coal train that in those days ran through Shotton, in an attempt to lob stones in with the coal in the trucks.

These days kids have got computers and Gameboys and Playstations. Death and mutilation are taken for granted. The nearest I had to an all-action hero was Marine Boy. He had chowie that made him breathe underwater, a best-friend dolphin, and a wicked theme tune. That was enough for me.

I remember saying this to some friends in a pub in South London once, and this big 40-ish Scouse bloke who hardly ever spoke said "Yeah I mean Peter Tatchell and all these militant gays grassing other gays up an' that is annoying. I mean that Marine Boy like there lad, he was the acceptable face of homosexuality wasn't he? I mean any bloke in their right mind wud give him one." I think that may have been Scousebloke's defining moment. I just remember feeling very afraid! About the same as the time me dad, with the aid of a torch and some gaffer tape made me think the Mysterons were in me bedroom.

( ** Mental note.... Check with Paul Mullen - in the T.V. series, did Marine Boy have a lass?) Of course in those days Cadbury's Creme Eggs was the size of small rugby balls. Nowadays a female blue-tit could lay bigger.

I sort of lost the plot there for a bit didn't I?

Anyhow football, that Shrewsbury mascot, what was it - a fox or a squirrel or some mutant hybrid? I was very worried when it disappeared round the back of the Cyril Knowles Stand with H'Angus and didn't come back. - Whaddya mean you didn't notice!! You weren't watching the match again were you? - Anyhow turns out they were in Asda car park collecting the balls their centre-half kept sending there. I'd have thought SHREWsbury would have a SHREW mascot in the same way SWANsea have a SWAN and ARSEnal have a big Robbie Williams. In an ideal surreal world all teams would have nickname mascots. Newcastle would have a big magpie, Everton would have a big toffee and Northampton would have a huge shoe repair kiosk that also does keycutting.

Can anyone remember the abuse Harry Wilson used to get from the Mill House terraces when he played left-back for us? My favourite was"F****** awful ball Wilson" directed at him during the pre-match warm-up.

Chip Fireball