Arsenal America

Last week Thierry Henry slammed in two goals, giving him 100 as a Gunner. So if he didn’t score any this week no one would have said anything. But did he put it in cruise control and let all the accolades that came his way this week give him a big head? No, he went out and got a hat trick against West Ham. That’s why he’s the best in the Premiership, if not all of Europe.

And as long as were here, I’ll throw myself a little shout out for predicting that the final score against West Ham would be 3-1.

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 Arsenal players who shrink in the face of pressure receive a Brass Monkey. Those who show grit and heart receive a set of Iron Balls.