It's a bunny old game
Friday 20 August 2004
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The rabbits have got the boot from VV Cercle Oedelem (Uefa.Com)
The phrase 'Every hole's a goal' may be a term heard more on the golfing circuit than in football circles, but Belgian club VV Cercle Oedelem have been left wishing it could apply to the beautiful game after their summer break. The players returned for pre-season to discover their pitch had become the new home to hundreds of rabbits, forcing chairman Eddy Sypré to ask fans to donate worn and smelly shoes in their efforts to ward them off. "We are tired of having our players twist their ankles in holes made by the rabbits," said Sypré, who came up with the rather novel idea of putting smelly shoes on the pitch while on holiday in a colleague's house in Limburg. "My colleague could hardly grow vegetables because rabbits ate them before they were fully grown. But this year his garden was looking marvellous because he had placed his old shoes all over the place to fend them off so I decided to try it out on our pitch. Apparently rabbits can't stand the stench of smelly feet." Let's hope the Oedelem players can.
Over the hill (well, not quite)
There have been some weird and wonderful excuses for being late home from a football match over the years, but Coventry City FC fans have, quite literally, taken it to new heights. On their way back from a recent match with Cardiff City FC, 50 of their supporters were left stranded on a steep mountain road for hours - because they were too heavy for their coach. As they made their way up Caerphilly mountain, the coach stuttered to an abrupt halt. Slightly concerned, the fans asked the driver if it was a mechanical failure but his response caught them by surprise. "My bus can't take your weight," he said. "It's just not powerful enough to reach the top of the hill with you guys on board so I have had to send for another coach to pick you up." One passenger was a little taken aback by the news. "I didn't think we were that heavy - although we do like the pies they sell at the match. A bus should be capable of carrying 50 people even after we'd eaten all the pies."
And now for something completely different
Normally when a footballer dips a hand into his increasingly cash-laden pockets it's to buy a BMW convertible, a piece of bling-bling jewellery or invest in a mock-Tudor mansion. Not so with Romanian midfield player Marian Aliuta, though. Wanting to facilitate a move from FC Steaua Bucuresti to city rivals AFC Rapid Bucuresti, Aliuta decided to bypass the usual negotiating process by paying his own €121,500 transfer fee. The 26-year-old handed over the sum to Steaua owner Gigi Becali to buy out his contract and then promptly penned a three-year deal with Rapid. As if that wasn't enough to make the rest of the continent's footballers choke on their Bollinger, Aliuta, previously Romanian football's highest-paid player on a reported €109,000 a year has also taken a pay cut to around €73,000 per annum. "It was a good move for me because I believe Rapid will offer me a better chance of showing my true qualities," he claimed. Finally, in other football news, one in four football fans have confirmed they would rather miss a vital operation than the first game of the season. In a Yahoo poll of 1,000 supporters, over 260 said they would forego a vital operation. Others would skip their first day in a new job or even their own wedding to be at the match.
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