DERRY’S KEEPER WOES CONTINUE

Unstable drunkard Brian Clough once said that a really good goalkeeper was worth about eight points, even to a side good enough to contest the title. More recently, the departure of Danish giant and Rudolf the Reindeer impersonator Peter Schmeichel saw Manchester United spent several years and many millions of pounds on the often deeply embarrassing attempt to find an adequate replacement for him, thus proving that money can't buy you everything if your scouting system is rubbish and your manager can't tell John O'Shea, Phil Neville and Mark Bosnich from good players. Even UCD learned the value of a great 'keeper several years ago, when Barry Ryan kept us afloat with a stunning rate of clean sheets (they were recreational drugs, damn it), winning the fans' player of the season for his efforts. For Derry City, this year has been quite a lesson in this regard. The departure of Forde has left them with a hole to fill. Not all that big a hole mind you, as few of us rated the guy as capable of catching a particularly virulent strain of avian flu while submerged in a vat of diseased chicken corpses, but it's been a problem position for them so far. They can ill afford this sort of thing either, with expectations in the league soaring after title rivals Shelbourne discovered that, in spite of their mother's advice, ignoring a problem won't make it go away. However, one recent signing raised hopes for a quick fix.

The latest contender for the number one jersey at the Brandywell was Nelly, an eight tonne, fully grown African elephant. “We had to do something,” said one board member, “and we can't nick another keeper off of UCD for months hi.” The initial logistical problems were substantial, but the club felt that Nelly's phenomenal shot stopping ability was worth it. “The first big one was the jersey hi. We got every sewing circle for thirty miles together to stitch it together out of a couple of old tifo flags hi. The badge was a nightmare hi.” While the problem of kitting out Nelly was substantial, it was a one off. Meanwhile, the club soon found itself facing the enormous task of feeding the world's second largest land animal* – Nelly ate a quarter tonne of food every day. “And what does a quarter tonne of food equate to hi? A quarter tonne of shit hi. Piles this high. We nearly lost Ciarán Martyn in a heap of it one day hi. He was so traumatised that we had to send him off to Norway to recuperate hi. He was feeling really low hi. He kept saying, 'No elephants in Norway, no elephants in Norway.' hi. Thing is, the first week he was there, he got bored and went to the natural history museum hi. They had a woolly mammoth skeleton hi. It took two branches of the fire brigade, twenty seven cops, a SWAT team, a hostage negotiator and an elderly phillumenist to get him out of the janitor's cupboard hi.”

The club was willing to overlook this sort of thing in light of Nelly's ability in goal. A first team coach told us, “It wasn't just the shot stopping. Nelly could really make himself big when he flared his ears, which is what you want in a keeper hi. All the really great keepers have that hi. Pat Jennings Senior can get BBC Scotland on his hi. And the one on ones... just wow hi. Who wants to take that on hi? Rounding Nelly took so long that the defenders generally got back, and who's brave enough to keep going when you've that sliding out at you hi? Forget the damn size, it was the tusks man hi!”

The problems didn't stop with injuries and maulings in training however. First there were problems with his registration. “FIFA have these really stupid rules governing transfers hi. They accused us of trying to register Nelly under a false name, to get around that two transfers in a season thing hi. It was all bollocks hi. The RSPCA and PETA were all over our case hi. I reckon they tipped off FIFA hi.”

The last straw came during a match at Richmond Park, against fellow title contenders St Pats' Athletic. “The bastards cheated hi. They used their super-rat mascot fellow hi. The Big Guy took one look at him, mistook him for a giant mouse, and stampeded hi. Six dead hi. If it was anywhere but Inchicore, there'd have been hell to pay hi.” After that, the club had to listen to the bid from Chelsea, where his initial promise was somewhat dented when he decided that he'd had enough of Jose Mourinho and stepped on Petr Cech's head before being shot.

STIG is at a loss as to how to attribute this all to FAI incompetence.

* - After Pat Dolan**

** - Yes, it’s a cheap shot. We’re not proud.

This article originally appeared in print in STIG Volume VIII, Issue III