AS soon as liquid was sprayed in his face in departures he knew something was seriously wrong.
Eight months of freedom. Eight months since leaving his position as manager of Real Brexit, his last posting in the so-called ‘world’s greatest London pub-based fantasy football league’.
Now he was sinking to his knees, a wave of nausea sweeping over him.
Contemplating his untimely demise at gate two of Durham Tees Valley Airport.
And when he heard another passenger innocently enquire ‘was that Emanuel Pogatetz dressed like a lass?’ his worst fears were confirmed.
Only one organisation used former professional footballers as assassins: the Kenna League’s manager experiences department.
It could be waking up with the barrel of Michael Ballack’s Mauser thrust into your mouth or Clint Dempsey threatening to extract a tooth with a pair of pliers.
Cross the manager experiences department and the outcome was far from pretty.
It was no fluke they had chosen Pogatetz as the trigger man. While managing Still Don’t Know Yet in his first season he had signed the Austrian for £3.5m in the February transfer window.
The 14th-place finish was nothing to do with it though.
It was the beginning of that season, his first in the Kenna, where he had made an enemy for life.
He realised it now as the darkness intensified and a woman who smelled strongly of Superkings Menthol wheezed ‘you alright, pet?’
He had called the Kenna administration ‘out of touch blazers’.
An enemy for life.
An enemy for death.
From that moment his time was up.
You never really left the Kenna. You went through life thinking you’d left, as he’d done since the summer, but they always caught up with you.
And as his life ebbed away, his head resting on the flabby thighs of a morbidly-obese airport worker, he thought of the strapline on the Durham Tees Valley Airport website.
Kenna table week 24
Full scores available from The Rub.
Kenna table week 25
