SPECTATOR SPORT
From Split to The Gambia
Frank Keating
I MISSED the big kick-off. Not for being too busy yawning, but because I am in Split for the European athletics. Next best thing to yawning many of you might say. Either way, the further you are away from the start of the soccer season the more agree- able. It is potty to start the winter's soccer slog in August. The drill is to ignore the game totally till at least St Crispin's Day, then suddenly dip into the League tables and find that Fulham, after a bright start, are already halfway down and slipping fast. Only then is winter setting in. Soccer's restart is especially precipitate this year: dammit, the World Cup submerged half the season's tennis and cricket, and general lolling about with a long drink and long legs in a summery frock. At the Spec's garden party in July, the splendid Henry Porter (I think it was; I was late and already catching up too fast) told how the night before he had dined chez (again, I think) Gavin Stamp — anyway, someone whose life had previously never been so much as remotely touched by football. 'Sorry I'm a bit late,' said Henry at the door, 'I was watching the football from Italy.' Tell me, Henry', come the reply, 'is this Gascoigne chappie any relation of the Salisbury Gascoyne-Cecils?' The mind boggles. In fact our hero is scion of the Gazzas, of Top Flat, 17 Pitt Street, Gates- head, Tyne-and-Wear.
Also a long way from Split. It is money that demands the soccer season starts gruesomely early, and there is also a lot of the stuff slurping and sloshing around among the allegedly amateur athletes who have gathered here where the Adriatic coast is speckled by a sombre scattering of islands and inlets. Or rather, the promise of loads of lolly. A good performance here at official championships and they can up their appearance-fee rates like billy-oh for the next couple of years. My God, most top athletes are dull eyed and self obsessed at the best of times; the new money flying around makes them worse. Not to mention some of their pharmacist's potions. Fast though; you've got to hand it to them there.
The last time I was in Yugoslavia was at the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo. Torvill and Dean were dead certs to win the ice dancing competition. We clomped around the slushy streets for a week, humming through chilblained lips the opening strands of Ravel's ruddy Bolero, which was the tune the pretty Yawnvill & Preen did their sliding stuff to. As well as us straight back-page blokes, Fleet Street also sent over a posse of tittle-tattle gossip men keen to find out whether the dreaded and doleful diamante duo in skates were having it off between their triple salchows or whatever. And if not, why not?
The tittle-tattlers were definitely not invited to the British Olympic Associa- tion's thrash one night, particularly as guest of honour was the Princess Royal, herself a previous Olympian. She had popped briefly into Sarajevo on her way to Africa for her Save the Children Fund. Indeed, she had to leave the party early and go straight to the airport.
Not long after she'd gone, one of the uninvited pop paparazzi, with a penchant for Royal gossip, burst in, desperate. We told him Her Royal Highness had already left for her next engagement. 'Where to?' he implored. 'The Gambia', he was told, quite correctly. Before anyone could elaborate, he charged out, to spend the rest of the night whipping and tipping his bewildered local taxi-driver over most of Bosnia, insisting he be delivered to a nightclub called The Gambia.
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