April 26 – Oggy Oggy Oggy
BACK in the early 1990s English football was a different animal. Back then footballers weren’t paid more money in a week than we’ll earn in a decade, Manchester United never won anything and for some reason there seemed to be far more ugly top-flight footballers.
Everyone’s first choice ‘keeper in the ugly XI (narrowly beating out Jim Leighton) was Steve Ogrizovic, who hung up his gloves today in 2000.
Poor old Steve was never blessed with a 10/10 in the looks department and perhaps this, coupled with the fact he played out most of his career with unfashionable Coventry City prevented him from being regarded as one of the best goalies of his era.
During his pomp Bobby Robson and Graham Taylor continually overlooked him for the England team, despite his heroics in the Highfield Road goal where he played a huge part in their 34-year top flight run.
If Oggy had stayed at Liverpool, where he was in the squad for two European Cup and one European Super Cup wins, who knows what he could’ve achieved?
Big Steve is also one of only three players to have played top-flight football in four different decades, along with fellow shotstoppers Peter Shilton and John Lukic and also the venerable Sir Stanley Matthews.
Mangus Hedman’s arrival at the Sky Blues saw Oggy moved to the bench in 1998 and after a couple of years of kicking his heels he hung up his gloves. City were relegated a season later.
It looked as though his nice quiet retirement had been rocked in 2003 when rumours began to emerge that Ogrizovic had been kidnapped in Kazakhstan. An online petition was set up to campaign for his release, but an enterprising hack from the Coventry Evening Telegraph found him at Coventry City’s training ground at the somewhat less exciting Ryton-on-Dunsmore, as the whole episode was proved to a zany internet prank.
See what esle was going on the crazy world of football here and join us tomorrow for you next instalment of OTFD
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Shanel on April 1st, 2010
Hi everybody, Happy Fool’s Day!
Two beggars are sitting on a park bench in Ireland. One is holding a cross and one a Star of David.
Both are holding hats to collect contributions. People walk by, lift their noses at the man with the Star of David and drop money in the hat held by the man with the cross. Soon the hat of the man with the cross is filled and the hat of the man with the Star of David is empty.
A priest watches and then approaches the men. He turns to the man with the Star of David and says, “Young man. Don’t you realize that this is a Christian country? You’ll never get any contributions in this country holding a Star of David.”
The man with the Star of David turns to the man with the cross and says, “Moishe, look who’s trying to teach us Marketing!!”
Happy April Fool’s Day!