Saturday, February 27, 2010

Role models in football

All this talk of role models in football - following the John Terry nonsense - has actually come to a head in our house. Our lads who play football have been known to do the odd silly celebration. Some of their pals have dived, feigned injury, answered back to referees and coaches as well as the odd tantrum. And it's clear where the inspiration for such dreadful behaviour comes from.

Even the team we watch - Blackburn Rovers - has some poor examples of humankind on the team.

Blissfully, we also have some real men. Role models, gentlemen, sportsmen, good men and examples to our little men. The kids know about this kind of thing and gave the following as their positive role models and the reasons why.

Ryan Nelsen - captain, never dives, always tries, always talks to the other players.
Keith Andrews - not that good a player, but does his best
Jason Roberts - always tries, got an MBE for helping other people and was really kind at the open day

I agree with all of that. Then, thanks to Rovers fan Stuart Grimshaw, we got onto who is in my all time Rovers role model 11. A team of honest professionals. Good human beings as well as decent players from those I've loved before, and in a 442 as well, a proper formation. Here we go.

Sir Roger Jones; Colin Hendry, Derek Fazackerley, Ryan Nelsen, Henning Berg; Mark Atkins, Tony Parkes, Stuart Metcalf, Jason Wilcox; Jason Roberts and, despite the prison, the beer and the cigs, Simon Garner.
Subs: Terry Gennoe, Damien Duff, Kevin Hird, Gordan Cowans, Mick Rathbone.
Manager: Don Mackay
Doing the half time raffle: Ronnie Clayton and Bryan Douglas.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

My Old Man still talks very fondly of Simon Garner! I remember him taking me to an FA Cup tie, probably 3rd maybe 4th round, in about 1983? I was a cocky little Liverpool fan expecting a cricket score that day at the old Ewood. Garner soon brought me down a peg or two by getting the first. We scraped through 2-1, but were beaten by Brighton in the next round. They got to the final, the one famous for the "and Smith must score!" I think. Anyway, I was very excited that day at Ewood at having Ronnie Clayton sat next to me! Happy days.

Michael Taylor said...

Simon Garner would be in any Rovers 11, but he was just such an honest, loyal and decent bloke.