paddy 9 Posted January 25, 2008 Share Posted January 25, 2008 (edited) by Harry Pearson Last week the former Newcastle midfielder Rob Lee attested to Kevin Keegan's matchless ability to come into a dressing room and instantly make the players "feel 10 feet tall". On Saturday Robbie Keane commented that when Jermain Defoe was handed the Spurs captaincy before the game with Sunderland the forward suffered a similarly amazing growth spurt. "Jermain is only 5ft but he was 8ft before the game," the Irishman told reporters. We can see from this that, when it comes to increasing a player's sense of his own height, Keegan is 25% more effective that the White Hart Lane captain's armband. It helps, of course, that the Newcastle boss himself is diminutive. It was his stature after all that led Germans to nickname the Hamburg forward Mighty Mouse, though the bacon rind addiction played a part too, obviously. Many readers are probably under the impression that Keegan affects this transformation in his players by charisma and brilliant man management alone. In fact, Special K is far more practical and cunning than he is often given credit for. It is well known that when he fi rst took over at Newcastle in February 1992 one of the first things the bubbling Messiah did was tackle the training ground changing rooms. However, not only did he have them cleaned and fumigated; he had all the fixtures and fittings replaced with smaller replicas and the heights of the door frames lowered. The effect was completed by always serving the players their tea in doll's house cups and saucers and ensuring that when they served lunch the catering staff made full use of Marks and Spencer's range of mini party snacks. In a nutshell: Keegan makes players feel bigger by reducing the size of everything around them. "What we didn't realise at the time was that all the security staff at St James' Park were retired jockeys hired by Kev," the Newcastle goalkeeper of that and several other eras, Pavel Srnicek, would later recall in his autobiography, Pavs of Glory . "You'd see the bouncers in their black jackets and you just towered over them. It felt fantastic. And, of course, Terry McDermott did an absolutely brilliant job too. I remember one lunchtime he cut a midget pork pie into 12 slices and served it to the first team squad with fried quails eggs, tiny wee jersey royals and some shredded Brussels sprout that he told everyone was cabbage. Eating that off one-third scale plates with kids' cutlery made your hands look absolutely massive. Terry had literally made us feel like giants." Team bonding weekends at Bekonscot model village and Legoland helped further to increase the Newcastle team's sense of its own enormousness. The whole elaborate scheme began to unravel during the pulsating 1995-96 season. With Keegan's team 10 points clear of their rivals at the top of the Premiership, their Belgian centre-back Philippe Albert wandered into a supermarket one day after mistaking it for a pigeon loft. What he saw in the fruit and veg section would have a dramatic effect on morale at St James' Park and alter the course of the people's game. "It was half-time of the crucial clash with Man United at St James' Park," Srnicek wrote. "The match was still in the balance at 0-0. We knew that, if we won this game the title would practically be ours. Then Arthur Cox brought in our traditional interval orange slices. When Philippe took his he studied it for a moment and then - and I'll never forget this moment for as long as I wear tracksuit bottoms - he said in a loud and authoritative voice: 'This is not an orange. This is a kumquat.' "Kevin tried to save the situation by arguing that it wasn't a kumquat, it was just a very small satsuma, but the damage was done. Our minds were totally messed up. We weren't huge at all. We were just men of average height. We had been conned. Eric Cantona scored the winner and the rest, as they say, is hysteria . "To be fair Kevin is a nice guy, the sort of manager who likes to put his arm around a players shoulder. But he couldn't do that with us without giving up the pretence that we were 90cm taller than him. In the end he lost the dressing room, which was not surprising since it was actually really, really little." The sports psychologist professor Phil Singlet also warns that making the players feel 10-feet tall may have dramatic short-term effects, but fail in the longer term. "The trouble," he explains, "is the players' excitement at suddenly being able to look a giraffe straight in the eye quickly pales once the cruel reality of always having to wear your trousers low down on your hips to avoid showing everyone the tops of your socks hits home. And then, of course, there is the other major concern. If you make a player feel 10, 12, 15 feet tall, then inevitably there is going to come a time when he starts to believe he is bigger than the club. And, who knows, he could be correct." Comments Edited January 25, 2008 by paddy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lazarus 0 Posted January 25, 2008 Share Posted January 25, 2008 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Big TRon 0 Posted January 25, 2008 Share Posted January 25, 2008 Ho Ho. That was funny. No really it was... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paddy 9 Posted January 25, 2008 Author Share Posted January 25, 2008 these people get paid a lot of money for writing shite like this, its unberfuckingleivable Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fop 1 Posted January 25, 2008 Share Posted January 25, 2008 Guardian sport "humour", written after a bad night at the theatre. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest alex Posted January 25, 2008 Share Posted January 25, 2008 Harry Pearon's wrote a couple of canny books but that column sums up a lot of why The Guardian's sports and football coverage in particular is so shoddy. There's more regular columns and articles in it that are 'humourous' than there are ones trying to be serious. I used to sometimes get The Guardian on a Saturday and I stopped for this reason. Bought it a few months ago for a photography guide that was in it (which was decent) and the paper is still shit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bombadil 0 Posted January 25, 2008 Share Posted January 25, 2008 That article is hilariously unfunny, and I would say the same if it was about Everton, Spurs or Man City. Shinton could do better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Happy Face 29 Posted January 25, 2008 Share Posted January 25, 2008 I thought it was brilliant. Very Viz. "I'll never forget this moment for as long as I wear tracksuit bottoms - he said in a loud and authoritative voice: 'This is not an orange. This is a kumquat.'" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest alex Posted January 25, 2008 Share Posted January 25, 2008 Didn't even crack a smile tbh. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Happy Face 29 Posted January 25, 2008 Share Posted January 25, 2008 "Pavs of Glory" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
luckyluke 1 Posted January 25, 2008 Share Posted January 25, 2008 Harry Pearon's wrote a couple of canny books but that column sums up a lot of why The Guardian's sports and football coverage in particular is so shoddy. There's more regular columns and articles in it that are 'humourous' than there are ones trying to be serious. I used to sometimes get The Guardian on a Saturday and I stopped for this reason. Bought it a few months ago for a photography guide that was in it (which was decent) and the paper is still shit. And they give a footballing column to Russell Fucking Brand (who I think can have his moments) which is frankly unreadable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest alex Posted January 25, 2008 Share Posted January 25, 2008 Harry Pearon's wrote a couple of canny books but that column sums up a lot of why The Guardian's sports and football coverage in particular is so shoddy. There's more regular columns and articles in it that are 'humourous' than there are ones trying to be serious. I used to sometimes get The Guardian on a Saturday and I stopped for this reason. Bought it a few months ago for a photography guide that was in it (which was decent) and the paper is still shit. And they give a footballing column to Russell Fucking Brand (who I think can have his moments) which is frankly unreadable. People like him and Harry Pearson should do guest columns once in a blue moon - then they'd probably be decent - rather than being regular contributors. It just smacks of the paper trying too hard to be cool and failing miserably imo. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LeazesMag 0 Posted January 25, 2008 Share Posted January 25, 2008 Pavs of Glory ? Never heard of it ....... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr Kenneth Noisewater 0 Posted January 25, 2008 Share Posted January 25, 2008 Is he the bloke who wrote 'The Far Corner'? Good book that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Happy Face 29 Posted January 26, 2008 Share Posted January 26, 2008 Pavs of Glory ? Never heard of it ....... ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ketsbaia 0 Posted January 26, 2008 Share Posted January 26, 2008 Thought that article was hilarious myself. Stupidly, I didn't realise it was by Harry 'Far Corner' Pearson until someone mentioned it, which is slightly embarrassing considering i'm reading the book through for what must be the 100th time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest alex Posted January 26, 2008 Share Posted January 26, 2008 Pavs of Glory ? Never heard of it ....... Have you heard of Paths of Glory though? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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