A FLEET of Royal Navy ships has been deployed off the north east coast in an attempt to ward off the possibility of further pirate attacks following the brief abduction of a Middlesbrough football player.
Danny Graham had only just transferred to Boro from Kenna League team Still Don’t Know Yet when the incident happened on Friday night.
A pirate raiding party sailed up the River Tees to the club’s Riverside Stadium, where a landing party disembarked, captured the striker, and took him back on board.
However, after realising that Graham was ineligible to play for anyone but Middlesbrough (and useless at football so of little use for ransom), he was swiftly released almost as suddenly as he was captured.
“Yaaarrrrr, t’was an administrative error,” said a pirate spokesman as their ship sailed back towards Somalia.
Outlook (on 24 September 2013): Spartak Mogadishu stunned the whole league in May when they lifted their first piece of the silverware, the Canesten Combi Cup. Not writing anything down and drinking heavily, the manager traditionally approached auctions with the gay abandon of an Al-Shabab shopping spree, and his reputation of firebrand was galvanised when he became the first manager to resign in the middle of an auction at the Emmanuel Olisadebe 2012 Euros. Attending last month’s all-dayer for the first time outside of Ramadan appeared to temper the Somali, and he even hooked some worthwhile players.
At the unveiling of the new squad at the club’s Spyglass Hill training facility, the manager admitted he felt slightly hornswoggled at the purchase of Glenn Murray, who’s been on crutches since May and will continue to be for some time. In Robert van Wolfswinkel, Marco van Ginkel and Johnny Heitinga, the manager has three players to feature in the national side for Holland, a country known throughout history for its maritime tradition. Hernandez, Lallana, Kolarov and Jaaskelainen all started the season in strong form.
Despite this Spartak are not managing to gel and slipping down the table with each passing week. In the Kenna there’s a very fine line between success or failure; between a white, sandy Caribbean island, a crate of rum and Keira Knightly, or five minutes in the upstairs room of a tavern with a toothless crone.
Treasure chest: The Spartak Mogadishu cheerleading squad are limbering up ahead of the club’s cup final appearance (photo courtesy of Grant Brummett and the Arizona Renaissance Festival)
A CHRISTIAN Benteke hat-trick in 18 minutes secured a cup final place for Spartak Mogadishu.
The Pirates had looked unlikely to beat Canesten Combi Cup holders FC Testiculadew but the Belgian international supplied a last-gasp lifeline. Benteke’s Somali manager was overjoyed.
“Yarrrrr! I be waitin’ many o’ year to get me mitts on some booty, and I don’t mean western tourists wit’ rope burn on tharr wrists, for I be gettin’ plenty o’ that!” said the Spartak Mogadishu boss banging his fist on the table to the raucous cheers of his management team, before ordering a petrified and dehydrated hostage to ‘blow the man down’.
Just Put Carles will be the other side contesting the 19 May final after their Catalan manager progressed with a rare Jordan Henderson brace in the second leg against Still Don’t Know Yet.
Continuing the bitter rivalry with the Kenna League’s other Catalan manager, the JPC boss said: *”PSV Mornington són els fills bastards de cabrers il · legítims, i aquesta victòria és un testimoni de la nostra superioritat sobre aquesta escòria que ni tan sols estan en condicions de menjar xoriço a la taula dels Castillianos.”
Commentators are citing the final between foreign managers as further evidence of the decline of managerial talent in England.
Failure to defend the Canesten Combi trophy will come as a double blow to the FC Testiculadew manager, as his chances of retaining the league title ebbed away even more with three weeks to go.
Defiant in defeat: The FC Testiculadew manager
The FCT manager said: “Fools! Every thousand years, I test each life system in the universe. I visit it with mysteries, earthquakes, unpredicted eclipses, strange craters in the wilderness, irregular bidding practices at fantasy football auctions… If these are taken as natural, I judge that system ignorant and harmless – I spare it.
“But if the Hand of tactical Brambling is recognized in these events, I judge that system dangerous to us. I call upon the great god Titus, and for his greater glory, and for our mutual pleasure, I destroy it utterly!”
*”PSV Mornington are the bastard sons of illegitimate goatherds, and this victory is testament to our superiority over those scum who are not even fit to eat chorizo at the table of the Castillianos.”
