12 True Sporting Facts

• Arsenal's goalkeeper in the 1927 FA Cup Final, Dan Lewis, blamed his greasy jersey for his allowing the ball to squirm under him and into the goal for Cardiff City's winner. Since then, Arsenal's keepers have had their shirts washed in detergent rather than the more traditional mixture of petroleum jelly and ox fat.



• A typo in the official published minutes of the Marylebone Cricket Club's annual general meeting for 1907 means that the official name of the sport for that year is "crikcet".



• While on holiday in Scarborough in the summer in 1967, Matt Busby visited a clairvoyant who told him that Manchester United would never again win the League Championship. This is why the club lobbied for a breakaway Super League.



• The Geneva Convention permits the New Zealand rugby team to kill anyone who disrespects the pre-match haka. The definition of "disrespect" is not stated.



• Ironically, Terry Venables is allergic to banknotes.



• If you were to multiply the force, in Newtons, of Chris Morgan's swinging right elbow by the stupidity of the FA's disciplinary procedures, the result, expressed as a quantity of low-functioning brain cells, could sink an island the size of Corfu (such as, say, Corfu).



• Charles and Eddie's 1992 hit 'Would I Lie to You?' featured John Fashanu as an uncredited backing vocalist.



• A Class AA high school football game in North Dakota between the Zachary Taylor Memorial Sheepdogs and the Bibbleswicksvilleton HS Jemimas in 1995 was interrupted when Sheepdogs cornerback Alphonse Slease-Dermier was gored to death by the team's mascot, a moose called Zeet, which had become confused and irritated by a flickering floodlight. The moose was exterminated, and the stuffed corpse of Slease-Dernier is now his old team's mascot. He is wheeled onto the field before home games to the accompaniment of his own horrible, horrible death screams, which are played over the PA system. It is customary at this point for the spectators to chant "Mooooooooose!"



• Sepp Blatter is an Immortal.



• All modern-day jockeys are descended from a single female jockey found in the Ecuadorean rainforest in 1915.



• In 1983, the Bolivian Second Division consisted entirely of teams named after particular days of the year. 30 de Noviembre defeated 1ro de Diciembre in the final on December 2nd.



• The star above England's crest, signifying their World Cup win, is actually an asterisk.