World Cup will be like a bridge over troubled water for South Africa
Published:
SOUTH Africa’s World Cup preparations have suffered another embarrassing set-back.
Like Manchester United’s FA Cup semi-final side, the South Africans cannot get a football through a target from a short distance.
Unfortunately, the constructors of the World Cup 2010 stadium took soul legend James Brown’s cry of ‘let’s take it to the bridge’ literally.
And they did.
A giant concrete ball made for the stadium smashed into a low bridge while being transported on the back of a truck.
The bridge came crashing to the ground, bringing traffic chaos to the streets of Johannesburg.
The ball, made by Sloof Custom Fabrications, was originally airlifted to the stadium by helicopter.
With the sight of a ball, whizzing through the air hundreds of metres up, many people thought they were in Moscow, and it was John Terry’s Champions League final penalty finally coming back out of orbit.
After arriving at the stadium by helicopter, the ball was just about to be lowered by crane on to the mountings above the main entrance when engineers discovered the brackets were wrong.
The engineers decided to return the massive monstrosity to their workshops by truck, but failed to take the low bridges into account.
It’s not the first time a mock football has caused havoc at the World Cup.
At the 2006 competition in Germany, two performance artists filled leather footballs with concrete, tied them to lamp-posts and placed a sign beside them saying ‘Can you kick it?’
Some passers by took up the challenge, and suffered a broken foot.
Berlin police arrested two men, aged 26 and 29, for the stunt.
Practical jokes can get out of hand as a few of my friends found out.
A friendly ongoing battle of pranks came to a head when one of them went on holiday for a week.
His flat-mate, seizing his opportunity dragged a hose into his bedroom, and sprayed his bed with water.
Soaked, he then sprinkled watercress seeds all over the duvet and pillow.
When he came home a week later his bed was full of green watercress.
It was a lusher surface than Fir Park – Motherwell take note.
Back when I had hair, when you could still have a good night out on the town for two shillings and sixpence, I was also the victim of a practical joke.
My friends emptied my tube of hair gel, and replaced it with shower gel.
And it rained. I have heard of a bubble hair perm, but this was ridiculous.
The more I put my hand through my hair, the bigger and frothier the bubbles became.
But the biggest practical joke of all must be the Old Firm’s desire to move south of the border to the English leagues.
Forget their arguments about fan base and increased revenue.
If it did happen the Old Firm would struggle to reach mediocrity, let alone be successful.
Newcastle United have as fervent a following as the Glasgow two, and more money. And look at the state of them.
Hopefully they will be accepted into England, then the Old Firm and their fans can get a taste of their own medicine.
They can experience what every other Scottish fan outside Rangers and Celtic does.
All hope for the new season soon turns into a bitter sense of disappointment and defeat about a month into the season.
When that truth, that you had been trying to keep silent, comes to the fore – that yet again you accept it will be nigh on impossible to break the big-money bullying of the bigger teams.
