“Lauren Steps Up, Grabs Iron Balls “

April 8, 2002 | Leave a Comment

“With no mid-week game this week let’s go ahead an present the Iron Balls Award today to Lauren, who converted a crunch PK to seal victory against Spurs on Saturday.

Thierry was injured, Edu wasn’t in the game and everybody else was looking around quietly whistling to themselves. Lauren, who takes the kicks for Cameroon, stepped up and stared directly at the ‘keeper. Once Keller committed Lauren cooly rolled the ball down the middle. A vital goal under immense pressure from a guy who has done whatever has been asked of him this season. You have to imagine he’d rather be playing in his natural midfield position but rather than piss and moan he just goes out and does his best every time. Well done!

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.”"

77″

Posted by Mr Zog | Filed Under Editorial 

“EINY on money, the youth system and staying focused “

April 8, 2002 | Leave a Comment

“EINY on money, the youth system and staying focused “

Posted by Mr Zog | Filed Under Mailbag