SPECTATOR SPORT
Ringing tones
Frank Keating
IT SEEMED a touch harsh last week when that goalkeeper in the Welsh league was sent off by the referee for 'time-wasting'. Among the custodian's gubbins at the back of his net, apparently, was a mobile tele- phone, and it rang and he answered it when he should have been concentrating on fac- ing up to a penalty kick. His plea that it was an important call concerning his baby sit ter's arrangements for that evening proved no mitigation and the red card pointed to an early bath.
One fancies the mobile phone will intrude more and more. Certainly some golf clubs already ban them from use on their courses. Half a dozen years ago, the mobile announced itself in first-class crick- et, hilariously. When he was playing for Worcestershire, Ian Botham was sponsored by a mobile phone company when they were still a novelty. Allan Lamb was anoth- er sharp young cove early to avail himself of a mobile. Worcester were playing at Northampton. Allan led his side out after lunch, realised he still had his mobile in his pocket, so asked that singularly nervy nut of a superstar umpire, Dickie Bird, if he'd mind looking after it.
Dickie accepted the mysterious and new- fangled instrument with distaste and suspi- cion, and added it reluctantly to the clobber of new balls, old balls, scissors, watches, light-meters, towels, and six counters already bulging the deep pocket of his umpire's white coat.
From the pay, this innocent handover was noticed by Ian B. A mischievous flicker now played on the famous wolfish grin. Botham knew Lamb's mobile telephone number. Dickie was standing at the bowler's end, and Ian allowed the bowler, David Capel, to deliver three balls — then, as Capel turned at his mark to bowl his fourth, Ian dialled on his own mobile. As Capel was about to pass the crouching Dickie at full pelt, the umpire's pocket exploded into sound. Dickie jumped a mile, and began to smack at his hip pocket as if it was housing a wasps' nest, and he contin- ued to essay around the stumps and the crease (to mix a nice metaphor) the dance of a cat on a hot tin roof.
The smattering of crowd at once fretted that their beloved Dickie had finally and conclusively flipped. Their fears were allayed when they saw the players, quicker on the uptake as they heard the phone ring- ing, falling about the turf in mirth. In the pavilion, with a dramatist's perfect timing, Ian let the pocket ring on shrilly almost till the moment a still convulsed Lamb removed it from Dickie's coat. Then Both- am switched off the cell, took a long and satisfied drag on his panatella, grinned again, and turned back to watch the racing on the dressing-room television.
Before the age of the mobile phone, sport's most enduringly ancient chestnut- flavoured telephone joke is of the fan who rang up Newport County (or Hartlepool, or Hereford, or Gillingham or Darlington, insert unsupported club to taste) to ask `What time is kick-off today?', to be answered by 'What time can you get here, son?'. I once telephoned directory enquiries to ask the number of Grimsby Town. The operator said the club, impres- sively, had six numbers, and which did I want. 'Information service sounds the most promising,' I said. 'Sorry, dear', she said, `that one's ex-directory.'
League soccer clubs, from the grandest downwards, invariably employ on their switchboard girls who have obviously been recruited after finding the Isle of Aran's branch of Woolworths too testingly fren- zied a career. In Martin Thorpe's unmiss- able Saturday column in the Guardian, he told last week of the supporter who tele- phoned Selhurst Park to enquire about Wimbledon's upcoming game. 'Sorry,' said Doreen or whoever, 'this is Crystal Palace's number. Wimbledon share our ground, sure, but their number is...' and she told him what to dial. He rang the new number. 'Hello, Wimbledon,' came the reply. It was the very same Doreen who answered.
Previous page
