rough guides, jumpers and outer mongolia

Yup, more football waffle.

Firstly the match. Alex Ferguson reckons that Manchester United like to do it the hard way, well he should try managing (or supporting Palace). Still, at the start of the season we'd have happily settled for going into the last Saturday (or even Sunday) with a chance of staying up. All is not lost.

Secondly, us. Once again our viewing of the great game was not without difficulties. All started well, the chosen bar had several screens, wasn't that busy and there seemed little that could wrong. A minute before kick off we were joined in our corner by another English guy. Now, we never did find out this guy's name but let's just refer to him as Pr**k for the rest of this story (rant).

We exchanged pleasantries and Pr**k soon launched into a series of mind numbingly dull stories. He told Courtney that the 2 best things about Malaysia (he lived there) were that everyone could speak English and you could use English style plugs! Then, despite us telling him we only had another 6 days here and had already decided where we were going, he started listing his top 243 destinations in Malaysia. You could even catch a speedboat to one of them. Anyway, all this I could cope with, especially as Ms Love was having to nod politely at most of it while I watched the game.

What really pushed things over the edge was a combination of factors. It transpired that Pr**k was actually, in common with us, a season ticket holder at Selhurst. Furthermore, like us, Pr**k also had friends at the game itself who could text him the score. Still no problem. That is until Star Sports decide to show the game on a 5 minute delay meaning that by the time anyone scored on the screen in front of us, our various contacts at Selhurst would already have sent us the score.

Realising that this somewhat detracted from the excitement of watching the game, Ms Love and I turned our phone off. After all, if it was only the result that counts then I'd support a team that occasionally wins and not Palace. Pr**k declined to do the same. On the positive side this meant that come the first Palace goal, I was able to refrain from dancing round the bar wildly, because Pr**k had already told us that we were about to concede a penalty minutes later. Courtney even went to the toilet, safe in the knowledge she was missing both goals.

I couldn't believe (adam and eve) it. Finally we'd secured a prime spot in front of a tv, we had sound, there wasn't the slightest chance of a powercut and even if any losers came in wanting the rugby on there were plenty of other tvs for them to use. This was what we'd spent the last 8 months searching for. And then along came Pr**k to spoil the fun.

He declined to turn the phone off, apparently he was expecting lots of other vitally important texts from his mates. Instead he offered to 'not tell us' if he got a message. As I pointed out, it somewhat detracted from the tension if everytime anyone attacked you knew they wouldn't score as Pr**k hadn't got any texts for the last 5 minutes.

Come the second half, and despite the fact that a) we'd been in our seats for 2 hours prior to Pr**k showing up, b) there were 2 of us and only 1of him and c) he was a Pr**k, we, and not him, moved seats and screens to one where we couldn't see him. This worked well and I'd almost forgotten he existed. That was until he appeared at my shoulder. "Don't worry, it's not a goal, just look at this". Mate Of Pr**k had texted to say "Freak has been sent off'. So we spent the next 5 minutes waiting for Crouch to be sent off.

Anyway, by now Pr**k had finally got the message and didn't interrupt for the tragic final denoument,. He even apologised to us on the way out 'if I may have spoiled it slightly for you'., I honestly think he was an imposter sent from above to torment me, he certainly didn't seem upset at the turn of events and I've never seen him in SE25.

And so we move onto Vancouver next weekend for Dowie's Last Stand. Eagles....