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Taking the Woof with the Smooth
It is an odd but well-known fact that acts of praise are almost always repaid with deadly deeds. If you pat a dog on the head and comment on its sweet nature, don’t be at all surprised if it bites your ankle and/or licks its nuts. So too with footballers ( though not the nuts bit, thankfully). Praise his silky dribbling skills as seen on the teli and he will immediately festoon the pitch with spittle or the contents of his sinuses. Those with a deep knowledge of canine behaviour tell us that dogs do these things because at heart they are wild beasts. Its much the same for footballers.
We should not be at all surprised by this. Until recently there was a strong bond between player and pooch. When Jackie Charlton was manager of Middlesborough, his front lawn was littered with large, well-gnawed bones. Ostensibly these were the property of his beloved labradors but a persistent ( though unspoken ) rumour had it that they were the remains of ‘prisoners’ Jack had taken whilst centre-half for Leeds United and England. During the late 70s and early 80s the tabloid press was awash with pictures of Kevin Keegan with his arm affectionately around a large, fluffy mutt with its tongue hanging, cartoon-like, out of the side of its mouth. And if the picture caption did not read ‘Kevin and his Dog’, you could be pretty certain that Kev had been snapped alongside Terry McDermott.
Sadly wagging tails have been replaced by WAGS. More photogenic they may be, but they do not occupy anything like the same place in the collective heart of the great British public. As a result neither do footballers. Now the only one in the football world with canine attachments is Roy Keane. Regrettably his ‘walking the dogs’ has become something of a euphemism for Roy’s quitting whatever it was he was being very well paid to do – playing for Ireland in the 2002 World Cup and managing Sunderland Football Club spring to mind. Until very recently his pooch Triggs was one of the most walked-about dogs in the country. Now just as she has gained a German Shepherd as a companion for such walks, fate has dealt our canine friends a terrible blow. Roy has decided to give their eight legs a rest and up sticks to become the manager of Ipswich Town. And they say ‘It’s a dog’s life’
Posted: Friday, October 30th, 2009 @ 00:10 am by BigTips Admin
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