Garry Nelson's teacher
Well-known member
Slow, clogging centre back. Half decent in the air with a tendency to "get rid if it". However, despite being utterly terrible at football I played Premier League and have played several times in an international stadium!
It helped that I moved to Taiwan for three years so I played ex-pat football in The Tavern Taipei Premier League. I played for Carnegies (anyone who has been to Taipei has probably danced on the bar at some point) although the league was named by the main league sponsor, a fat Swiss bloke called Michel who owned the bar where most people watched English football - hence the Premier League.
The usual winners of the league were the Taipei Red Lions. Because Taiwan's national team hardly ever played and were only amateurs they used to lease the national stadium pitch and changing rooms to all comers and the Red Lions made it their home ground. We also used to train there with them on a Thursday night. Every now and again the Thursday training sesh would be replaced by a friendly, and so it was here that I played against someone who had played for Bayren Munich (I've told this story on here before).
He'd been an integral part of the Bayren youth team but had suffered a horrific knee injury which ended his career in football, and found himself in Taiwan, teaching. He played very occasionally for the Red Lions but not often because a) he was brilliant but b) he could normally only last about 2 minutes.
In this particular game I was moved to the unfamiliar environs of right back and he was playing left wing. At the time I had no idea he'd played pro, nor that his knee was dodgy and the lads didn't tell me because they thought it would be funny. A long diagonal ball came out to my wing, he got to it first, killed it with one touch, moved inside with his second touch and put it in the opposite top corner from about 35 yards with his third. Cue lots of laughing.
My mate then two footed him He went off screaming and never played again. Apologies for those that have now read this twice but it is very definitely my sporting claim to fame
Here the stadium is in all it's glory. I can't emphasise enough that it was EMPTY when we played and spectators for the Premier League games would have been outnumbered by your average Sussex Sunday League Under 11s Division 3 game.
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I was also shit at cricket but all my funny stories about that actually involve [MENTION=29192]Brighton Lines[/MENTION]
World Class anecdotage.
But your reference to playing in an 'international stadium' reminded me that I can go one better - football in an Olympic stadium, no less.
Well, not quite. I played at a ground in The Wirral called the Bebbington Oval. The film Chariots of Fire had to find a stadium that could pass for the 1900 Paris Games - and chose Bebbington Oval. (We won, by the way.)
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