Paul Ince, his fiery nature displayed even when there was no ball to be contested, became involved in the scene. Eventually Cantona was bundled away in the albatross arms of the United goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel, Davies in attendance.”There was just the sickening sight of a man losing complete control of himself,” says Alan Smith, then Crystal Palace manager. In all my years of commentating I have never seen anything quite like this.”All hell broke loose and players rushed to intervene. Norman Davies, United’s kit man, rushed to grab Cantona with the help of a steward who moments earlier had been urging the fan involved to back off.”And as Cantona walks from the field,” bellowed Capital Radio’s stentorian voice of football, Jonathan Pearce, “he’s Oh my goodness Cantona has This is quite unbelievable He’s And now the crowd are. Then Cantona fell on to the barrier and on to the ground, before he picked himself up to land a right-handed haymaker, which the spectator returned. The flurry was brief, as punched exchanges are when the adrenalin suddenly rushes through the body to a brain beginning to think better of it. There was what seemed to be a spasm of anger, and suddenly he launched himself, right foot first, into a kung- fu kick.
Cantona’s studded sole landed in the chest of a spectator wearing light trousers, a leather jacket, white shirt and Crystal Palace club tie.
He had gone some 20 yards when something in the front row of the Selhurst Park crowd attracted his attention He turned and paused, then moved on a few yards Someone else now disturbed him. Night of the red mist
T HEN it happened. Rather than trudging, head bowed, as ordinary players do in such circumstances, Cantona now strode, erect, seemingly resolved to face dismissal with defiant dignity. It wasn’t the fondling that upset him, though: it was having to keep quiet while it went on. Watching racing’s loudest mouth squirming with the effort of keeping schtum while Messrs McGrath and Lineker ransacked his person will have given many followers of the Turf particular pleasure.Perhaps it would be a good idea to allow the public to vote for future victims Do I hear a nomination for Eric Hall?. It’s not going to be Linford Christie, is it?The other mystery guest was John McCririck, and he obviously found the experience a trial. You have to wonder how long it will be before a woman is brave (or foolish) enough to appear in the “Feel the sportsman” round, in which the blindfolded regulars have to identify a silent mystery guest by feel alone.
One of last week’s gropees was Eddie “The Eagle” Edwards, announced with what must have been one of the most unnecessary captions of all time. Some pillock walks on wearing pebble spectacles, a pink rubber suit and skis. Lineker taunted Hancock with “You’re such an anorak” and Hancock replied to a later sally with “You’d best piss off, mate.” Hancock tried to intervene in a particularly lurid and extensive fantasy constructed around Gower’s wedding night (“Howzat?” “You’re out”, etc) by warning the teams: “This is the kind of conversation we’re supposed to have after the show.”The banter is what makes the evening so appealing, but it’s all-boys- together stuff, and Tessa Sanderson, the other guest, barely got a word in. Thus McGrath referred to Gower, the very bald Hurst and their thinning guest Clive Anderson as “Fluffy and the Slap-heads”. The captains, Gary Lineker and David Gower, and the regular guests, Lee Hurst and Rory McGrath, have quickly realised that answering questions is secondary to exchanging insults and making racy asides. “I don’t really remember.” It was going to be a long day.They Think It’s All Over (BBC1), the sports quiz which, in the words of the compere Nick Hancock “says `No’ to casual knitwear”, is coming along very nicely. “Larry, what was going through your mind before you teed off?” “Well,” Mize said.
“The players must be feeling nervous about now,” Livingstone said. “None of the players will want to be seen on the putting green until they are absolutely ready.” And, he might have added, absolutely awake.Undaunted, Livingstone turned to his studio guest, the American Ryder Cup veteran Larry Mize. “What’s going on down there, Oosty?” “Er, not a lot, David,” Oosty reported, peering at the camera through the gloaming. David Livingstone, the anchor man, called up Peter Oosterhuis on the practice green. Within seconds of the kick-off, the burly Gascoigne hurled himself at the first Celtic player to come near him and conceded the first foul of the game.Sky are so keen to extract the maximum possible mileage from their expensively acquired events that, like eager schoolboys, they always show up hours before the scheduled starting time.Their Ryder Cup coverage teed off as the sun rose over Oak Hill, which meant that unfortunately not much was happening. “The two ends being left barren look a little bit silly,” he said, which was pretty rich coming from a bloke in a half-built suit.It was Paul Gascoigne’s first Old Firm game, and to point up the atmosphere of sectarian aggression the producer had put together a selection of particularly crunching challenges from past matches between the two rivals, set to a doomy passage from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet.”Will the hurly-burly pass Gascoigne by?” Richard Keys, the presenter, asked It didn’t.
They are half-way through rebuilding the stadium, so on one side of the pitch you see a pounds 17m grandstand, and on the other a construction site. The former Celtic player Charlie Nicholas, sporting a bizarre lapel-less pinstripe number, didn’t like the look of the place. His choice of Barnet as an example of the clubs at the bottom level of football’s financial pyramid was convenient for two reasons: Underhill Stadium, the club’s ground, is (a) only half an hour’s drive from ITN’s HQ, and (b) a tip.
More complaints about the surroundings at Celtic Park, venue for the Old Firm match on Tuesday (Sky Sports). The rest of Graham Miller’s report on the Bosman judgement was, in contrast to Hall, comprehensible. “It’s total, total disgraceful,” he blustered, his spectacular eyebrows bristling like two caterpillars disputing a twig.
