MANY things have caused football matches to be delayed over the years from crowd trouble, bad weather, or even dodgy floodlight failures. But today in 1996 a match no less important than the Old Firm derby at Parkhead between Celtic and Rangers was interrupted thanks to an intruder on the pitch. Sadly Erica Roe was nowhere in sight as the invader was a fox, who must have mistaken Parkhead for Filbert Street.

The referee Hugh Dallas had to delay Celtic from taking a corner as the fox weaved this way and that like a four-legged Maradona, evading several players before dashing back into the crowd.

Celtic public relations manager Peter McLean said: “We were very impressed with the pace of the fox. It still hasn’t been caught. We don’t know how it got in and how it escaped. We have even been given the brush-off by its agent.” Basil would have been proud of that one. Boom boom!

Old foxy’s appearance in an SPL game is not the only time an animal has interrupted play. There was the incident we told you about last year when Jimmy Greaves had to use all his skill to nab a dog that had run onto the pitch during England’s 1962 World Cup clash with Brazil. Similarly in 2005 a cat made a brief appearance on Preston’s Deepdale pitch, while a squirrel decided to try his luck during a Stevenage versus Bath City cup tie in 1999. Lovely footwork mind.

Rather more seriously former Brent goalkeeper Chic Brodie came-a-cropper when a pooch ran on to the field during their match with Colchester. As Brodie went to receive a back-pass the dog launched himself at the ‘keeper, shattering his kneecap in the process. He was stretchered off and said afterwards: “The dog might have been a small one, but it just happened to be a solid one.”

Keen to prevent the mammals from having all the fun, there have been a number of bird strikes during games as well. In 1976 during the Bundesliga match between Bayern Munich and VfL Bochum a duck landed close to German goalkeeper Sepp Maier who made himself big and lunged for the bird, missing spectacularly. Foul! More recently in the Finnish first division when TPS took on KuPS a duck which had wandered into the middle of the match was struck particularly hard by a corner kick from Seth Ablade which knocked it unconscious. Some kindly nearby fireman apparently brought the duck round (how do you do that??) and it recovered to make a nuisance of itself elsewhere.

Last in our You’ve Been Framed-style round up of comedy animal capers is the tale of Carlos Secretario and the rabbit. At the Bernabéu during the 1996-97 league game between Real Madrid and Betis a rabbit found itself on the pitch and it fell to Real’s Secretario to use his lightening quick reactions to catch the blighter. Commentator Arsénio Iglesias remarked: “Secretario may or may be not a good player, but he is indeed a great hunter!”

We will leave you with a compilation of some of these animal cracker matches, and have a look here for the tale of an epic encounter between England and Italy at Highbury on this day in 1934.

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