Arsenal America

“Three cheers to our captain, Tony Adams. Here?s a guy with nothing left to prove. His place in Arsenal history is secure. Terrible, morale-killing injuries this season and he had every right to say, ?That?s enough, I?m through.? But instead he continued to rehab and work his way back. Just as the team is reeling ? FA Cup draw, two Champs League losses ? Big Tone comes back to inspire us to a 3-nil defeat of Newcastle.

The Urban Legend that inspired this feature:

Every sailing ship had to have a cannon for protection. Cannons of the time required round, iron cannonballs. The master wanted to store the cannonballs such that they could be of instant use when needed, yet not roll around the gun deck. The solution was to stack them up in a square-based pyramid next to the cannon. The top level of the stack had one ball, the next level down had four, the next had nine, the next had sixteen, and so on. Four levels would provide a stack of 30 cannonballs. The only real problem was how to keep the bottom level from sliding out from under the weight of the higher levels. To do this, they devised a small brass plate (”"brass monkey”") with one rounded indentation for each cannonball in the bottom layer. Brass was used because the cannonballs wouldn’t rust to the “”brass monkey”", but would rust to an iron one. When the temperature falls, brass contracts in size faster than iron. As it got cold on the gun decks, the indentations in the brass monkey would get smaller than the iron cannonballs they were holding. If the temperature got cold enough, the bottom layer would pop out of the indentations spilling the entire pyramid over the deck. Thus it was, quite literally, “”cold enough to freeze the balls off a “”brass monkey.”"

So, when an Arsenal player shrinks in the face of pressure, he is awarded an Brass Monkey. When he steps up and makes a solid contribution, he gets the Iron Balls Award.”