June 3 – Crouching Tiger, Hidden Robot

Back in the summer of 2004 just as Rooney was strutting his stuff so impressively for England in Portugal, Southampton splashed out £2million on the ludicrously proportioned Peter Crouch.

Many Saints fans were not happy with the deal – not least because Crouch had spent time playing for bitter south coast rivals Portsmouth.

Crouchie had spent the previous couple of seasons stalking around in Villa’s reserve team and the then Villa manager David ‘eh we’re a young team’ O’Leary probably couldn’t believe his luck that someone was willing to not only take the gangly goon off his hands, but also pay £2m for the privilege.

Fast forward to the end of the 2004/5 season and the picture was very different. Not only had Crouchie been probably the Saints best player of the season, contributing 16 goals and nearly keeping them up, but that summer Liverpool shelled out £7m to take him to Anfield. Just as Crouchie was getting over the shock of that, and before you could say ‘he’s got a good touch for a big man,’ Sven called him up to the England squad. From Villa reserves to leading the line for England in one short season.

Unlike many previous unlikely call ups (Ricketts, Beattie, Phillips etc), old Crouchie actually managed to keep his place in the squad and Sven was even going to take him to the World Cup.

As part of the pre-tournament preparations England, as usual, played a number of meaningless friendlies against various no-hopers. Nothing like a good 5-0 thumping of the Faroe Islands or whoever to get the media to turn the ‘we’re going to win the world cup’ bandwagon into a fully fledged ocean going liner.

It was in one such game on this day in 2006 that the Couching Tiger Hidden Dragon showed that given the opportunity against fairly limited opposition, he could actually put the ball in the back of the net, which was more than Heskey ever did for England.

After coming off the bench to score in England’s previous game against Hungary, Crouch starts the game against Jamaica up front alongside Michael Owen. Despite missing a penalty, Crouchie bags a hat-trick to become something of a “cult hero” according to Garth Crooks in his post match interview with the striker.

Not only did Crouch out do Heskey with his goal scoring exploits, but Heskey’s golf swing and dj celebrations were comprehensively out shone by Crouchie’s robot dance. See the whole thing below and come back tomorrow when we’ll be traveling back through time once again.