TV VIEW:SEVERAL HOURS after Chelsea and Manchester United's planned Sunday ding-dong at Stamford Bridge had been postponed on Saturday, Sky Sports were still advertising this particular clash of the titans.
It’s possible, then, a few souls tuned in yesterday expecting to see the Super Sunday skirmish, only to be greeted by Richard Keys declaring: “Camp Bastion is our venue this afternoon!”
It’d have been less puzzling, though, if they’d been watching Sky Sports News earlier in the day, Geoff Shreeves reporting from the British military base in Afghanistan, and advising us to tune in at 3pm for Richard, Andy Gray and Jamie Redknapp’s chat with the troops.
Geoff was accompanied on his week-long trip by Soccer AM presenter Rocket, who was asked by Hayley McQueen back in the studio to describe his experience in Afghanistan. “It’s been absolutely amazing,” he said, “every TV has Sky Sports on it.”
This, it has to be said, was news to us, we had no clue Sky’s tentacles spread as far as, say, the homes of Helmand Province, but Geoff quickly clarified it was just the tellies at the Camp that had the channel on them. “And Sky Sports is a big, big part of their lives out here,” he assured us.
“The chaps were telling us that during a contact, when they were being fired upon and were returning fire as well, their mate actually turned to them and said ‘Listen, if we don’t wrap this up in half an hour we’re going to miss Soccer AM’.”
Rocket beamed with pride, it quite clearly had never dawned on him the troops’ desire to see, say, The Crossbar Challenge, was actually encouraging them to complete hostilities early doors, thus speeding up Britain’s entire mission in Afghanistan.
We misunderstood Keys entirely when he told us Sky had sent Gary Neville and Ryan Giggs in to combat, leaving us assuming he meant Afghanistan. At that point we half expected to see footage of hundreds of thousands of Taliban coming out with their arms up, howling “please, no, NOT Gary Neville!”
Sky, though, spared the Taliban that ordeal, instead sending Gary and Ryan to an army base in England where they had a go at a flight simulation thingie. Both players, sadly, crashed their planes, Ryan turning a luminous shade of green as his machine rollercoastered its way to a virtual runway. Gary’s verdict on the experience as he left the cockpit? It was succinct enough: “Jesus.”
The troops back at Camp Bastion were less than impressed, not least Chelsea fan and Royal Air Force man Xavier. He had other things on his mind, though, particularly that mangled Chelsea shirt he had in his hands.
“What happened it?” asked a stunned Geoff. “The lads from the squadron took it away and blew it up,” he explained.
“Oh,” said Geoff.
Next, Manchester City fan Corporal Tom Moore. “But all me mates call me Moonhead,” he told Geoff. “Why do they call you Moonhead?” “It’s a long story, like, I don’t really want to go in to it,” he said, so Geoff thought it best to leave it.
Anyway, Moonhead wanted to know if City were all set for world domination, so Jamie and Andy told him, pretty much, they were.
But, to be honest, they’d said much the same thing to the Torquay supporter, so hell-bent were they on raising all the troops’ morale.
That was Super Sunday, then, utterly football-less, which was almost the case on Snowy Saturday, Ipswich v Leicester one of the few games to beat the elements. Well, ish.
“This is not a bad case of dandruff, this is serious snow,” Peter Beagrie assured us as he updated us from the Portman Road pitch at half-time, his head and shoulders almost disappearing under the drift.
With Ipswich 3-0 up the consensus was the referee would earn himself a George Cross if he had the courage to inform Roy Keane he was abandoning the game, even though Roy and Leicester counterpart Sven-Goran Eriksson had, by then, taken on the look of Frosty the Snowman in their respective dug-outs.
The ref, though, was valiant enough to call the players off for 15 minutes in the second half to allow the groundstaff time to locate the pitch markings under the snow. It was a decision that impressed neither Roy nor Peter, the latter noting “the last thing we want is to be sat here at midnight, we’ll turn in to pumpkins”.
They returned, though, the Tractor/Snowplough Boys holding out for the points. “We are not good on snow, that’s for sure – I didn’t know that before, now I do,” said a peeved Sven. “In Sweden we go skiing on snow, we don’t play football.”
The weather outside might have been frightful, but the win was positively delightful for Roy. From now til May? “Let it snow,” he hummed as he sleighed home.
