SHOCKWAVES from Saturday’s Kenna fantasy football auction are still being felt in London five days on.
The marathon event shook the upstairs bar of the Roebuck in Borough for a record eight hours, as 21 managers worked their way through 232 lots and many more units of Central European lager.
Robin van Persie fetched the highest price of £46m – almost half a Kenna manager’s ton budget – bought over Skype by a mysterious man in Valencia wearing a Panama hat.
At £39m each Wayne Rooney and Sergio Aguero were the next biggest signings bought by St Reatham FC, the former Woking manager’s new team, and KS West Green, the Chairman’s team, respectively. Both managers steered their teams to relegation last season.
But it wasn’t the ninth annual Kenna auction itself that caused the biggest stir.
Locked in competition for a full shift, the majority of Kenna managers decided to accept the FC Rapid de Cuillons manager’s invitation to a late drink on his Thames boat bar: Bar&Co.
As the complimentary shooters flowed, the pressure of entering the world’s most competitive fantasy football league began to show, with memories of the evening becoming hazier.
Anders Breivik lookalike the Judean Peoples’ Front manager was among a hardened group of post-auction revellers who reported getting home at breakfast time, but he was not the biggest casualty.
Shutting himself into the Kenna HQ situation room with nothing but a case of tinned sardines and the auction wildcards, it took until Wednesday for the Kenna chairman to come to terms with the beast he’d created.
Emerging from his solitary vigil the chairman said: “Up until Saturday many people associated with the Kenna often wished there was more than one auction a year. Not any more.
“Glad as we are to be involved with this great institution, no one’s sanity, home life or alimentary canal could possibly deal with more than one of those sessions in 12 months.”
The first transfer window in October will probably come close.
The league will issue full details of teams and remaining budgets ahead of the season curtain raiser on Saturday at 12.45pm.
