Despite the fact that Beckham had virtually put the handcuffs on himself
Posted in General on 27. Sep, 2010
Despite the fact that Beckham had virtually put the handcuffs on himself and climbed into the back of the Black Maria, the FA decided they had insufficient evidence to charge him. He claimed that the Arsenal man had broken the agreement because he has a “mental problem” with Van Nistelrooy.This will rage on, but whether we will ever get a full disclosure of who threw the soup, and/or pizza, that forced Ferguson into a change of clothing before appearing on TV is still in doubt. Controversial referee Riley won’t be much help, because he and his assistants remained resolutely locked in their dressing room while the fracas was ensuing It is probably just as well. Had he presented himself as a target it is unlikely that they would have taken the soup out of the can.Unfortunately, the presenting of a dossier to the FA is no guarantee that a tin-opener will be taken to the affair. Indeed, many of us have only just realised why we were so happy at Arsenal’s 49-game unbeaten record: they are such bad losers let’s hope they go another 49.Having notched up a few brownie points by his restraint, Ferguson felt able to let loose yesterday about Wenger.
Despite an unusual silence over Old Trafford during the past week, United are said to be compiling a dossier on the entire episode and will deliver it to the Football Association this week.Earlier last week, it looked as though both clubs had decided to stay tight-lipped about the affair. Arsenal’s vice-chairman, David Dein, visited United’s chief executive and they agreed that the less said the better. Unfortunately, gentlemen’s agreements can often suffer from a lack of gentlemen. And while United’s manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, clamped tight his jaws, Arsenal’s Ars? Wenger can’t stop talking about it.
If anyone should experience a squelchy feeling when walking into Old Trafford it will be all that soup they have swept under the carpet. Here we are, a week after Manchester United and Arsenal enacted another of their high dramas, and we are no nearer knowing who threw what at whom, or even what flavour it was.
Some say pea, some say tomato, some say that a side order of pizza was included and some say who cares anyhow?But explanations are on the way. “I have to support England, but it’s more from sentiment than realism.”. Tyson took off his shoes, which were found the next day in Denis Compton’s room.Tyson visits England often, still speaks with a Lancashire accent, and while he is now steeped in Australian cricket lore his favours have not changed. He saw me looking worried and asked after the cause of my anxiety.
“If he ever loses mastery over himself, his remorse amounts almost to psychological self-flagellation.”But Tyson offers observations on Australian cricketers too, including a couple of anecdotes about Keith Miller which were missed when the great all-rounder died two weeks ago “How I admire Miller. On the Orsova he met a girl from Sydney called Margaret, and they saw each other regularly in Australia There were tears when he left. He has never seen her again and has been married for 47 years to Ursula, whom he met fleetingly on that trip and who came to England the following summer.Fifty years ago this weekend, incidentally, Tyson and a few other England players went to a party thrown by some air hostesses. “I came to the conclusion that Australia is a country where cricket is still a young man’s game, methodical in approach.”There is an air of slight melancholy to the book, partly because Tyson was never as potent again There is also a subplot. When I answered that I couldn’t he made the wonderfully perspicacious observation which put everything in true proportion: ‘Then why were you worrying then and why are you worrying now?’”The lessons are still there from the 1954-55 tour if England want to look at them and absorb them,” Tyson said at his home in Sorrento, Queensland last week. He then helped to put matters into perspective by enquiring if I could remember what I was worrying about a year previously.
At 74, he has long been retired on the Gold Coast but keeps his coaching hand in, visiting India, where he coaches the coaches, and occasionally being persuaded to do one-on-one sessions.His diary, complete with Tyson’s own photographs and contemporary press cuttings, naturally reveals a different age. It took the MCC, as they were then, three weeks to reach Australia on the boat, and there were another seven weeks before the First Test.In day-to-day jottings he gives an insight into his colleagues which it would not have been possible to do in the immediate aftermath. Thus, we learn that he thought Peter May was the archetypal public schoolboy, wonderfully coached, always under control. As it turned out, he bowled them out during the day and wrote about it in his room at night.Tyson was prompted to show his diary to a wider audience because it is the tour’s 50th anniversary, because there are still lessons to be learned from it, and you suspect because 11 of the players on that tour are dead. “The theme of international cricket has changed so dramatically that I thought it would be instruc- tive, perhaps illuminating, to do a book saying ‘this is what it was like then’ and contrast it with now,” he says. “Everything, the whole social background of tours has changed.