Football Notebook

Never mind supporting your own team, a vital component of being a football fan is loathing other clubs.

It is obviously very worrying that the hopes of a nation rest on a middle-aged man who sports a ridiculous ponytail but Notebook has some bad news for David Seaman as he prepares to fly out to Germany for Saturday's World Cup qualifier.
Normally youngsters look up to sporting personalities but Notebook is afraid to report that even children's comics are now ridiculing Pony Tail. It's one thing for grown-ups to point out the absurdity of his mane but now even the Beano's character Ball Boy takes the mickey out of Safe Hands during a visit to the zoo.
There's only one thing for it. His advisers will have to launch a PR offensive for a rival kids magazine to get some positive publicity.
Now let's see, who would be sympathetic to old Pony Tail? Number for Barbie Magazine, please.

Whenever a big international match comes along, there is always talk of omens. When the first representat ive match between England and Germany was played on 23 November 1899 at the Berlin Athletics sports ground, England won 13-2 and The Times noted that: "Only a strong wind blowing across the ground hampered the scoring." The victorious England team contained a Brown and a Chadwick. Call up the youngsters, Sven.

Among the other wonderful selection of 'sports' books offered to us at Notebook this month were two crackers. The Safe Use and Operation of Bouncy Castles and Riding the Jetstream, the story of ballooning from Montgolfier to Breitling.
Weep for the destruction of the rainforests.

We must all have heard disapproving relatives tut tut as they mention the amount of gobbing and dribbling that footballers do on the pitch.
England's players had better watch their mouths in Germany because the subject has caused a heated row. It all started when Willi Lemke - a former coach of Werder Bremen who is now an education minister - said schoolkids were copying the disgusting habit of highly paid players.
Kaislerslautern's Mario Basler was having none of it.
He said: "We can't carry a packet of hankies on the pitch. I'll never give up spitting. This is a contact sport not a women's coffee morning." (At this point the Dorking Ladies All Gold morning club can feel free to lob one towards the spitoon).
Volker Roth, head of the German FA's refereeing association, said it was a revolting habit to do with "a matter of upbringing" and claimed he had never seen a referee clearing his nose.
Perhaps Rudi Voller could give us his opinion. The German manager was, of course, given his own unwanted shower when Holland's Frank Rijkaard spat over him in the 1990 World Cup.

There were trillions of people out for the Champions League junket (sorry, draw) in Monaco except Leeds chairman Peter Risdale, who declined to break from his holiday in the south of France
After Friday's UEFA Cup draw, Garth Crooks was interviewing Chelsea managing director Colin Hutchinson but had to stop mid-sentence. "You've forgotten who we drew, haven't you?" joked Hutchinson.