Poor Sports:
Celebrating the Worst in Athletics

booyah The Die-Hard Fan

by Jeff Hause

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"I've got the urn!!!"
There is no greater sportsman than the die-hard fan. And there is no greater die-hard fan than the British hooligan. They are banned in many countries for their over-enthusiastic love of sports, which can at times turn life-threatening.

But death is a trivial matter to the true sports fan--and the following story proves it. For while rugby players only have to contend with dead balls, this fan had to contend with much more.


In May, a British hooligan took his 77-year-old father-in-law to watch a rugby league final in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Now, it's a commendable thing for a young son-in-law to bond with his legal dad. "'Til death do us part," after all. And the long trip to Scotland probably meant a lot to both men--not to mention the daughter. So with her blessing, these two zealous rugby men set out on their weekend journey. After a weekend of camaraderie while cheering their favorite team on to victory, any personal problems between them would be a dead issue.

On Saturday they witnessed the league final.

Little did they know how final it would be.

The winner of the match was never reported by the major press services, but we can assume that it was filled with heart-stopping action.

Our hero awoke in a Glasgow hotel room the next morning. He woke up first... and last. Because dad apparently wasn't the die-hard fan that the son-in-law was--in fact, dad was more lifeless than than a senior centre cricket match.

Facing true sudden death overtime, our hero could not be dissuaded from accomplishing his original mission. He decided to show the famous British "stiff upper-lip" (while dad would be stiff everywhere else). He would complete the journey with his father-in-law, exactly as planned.

Nobody was going to accuse him or his father-in-law of being a quitter!

So he dressed dad in his usual touring clothes and attempted to smuggle the body back home from Scotland on a tour bus.

"For reasons known only to himself, he decided to dress the man--I believe in a shirt and tie and a suit and also a baseball cap--and he got him onto the bus," a Glasgow police spokeswoman told Reuters. "Apparently, he pulled the cap down over the man's eyes and the rest of the coach were unaware that the man was dead."

How could they have known? All hooligans smell bad after a weekend of cheering and carousing. And the old man would have been tired from two days of celebrating, so nobody would think twice if he appeared to be sleeping the entire way home.

In case you question our hero's sensitivity at this point in the story, he did eventually phone his wife to tell her that her beloved father had died and was coming home on the bus. "Good game, though!" he probably added.

Sadly, our hero's wife was not a true sports fan, and didn't believe in the importance of finishing a quest. She called in the official state "referees."

Acting on the distraught daughter's tip, the English police stopped the bus en route and removed the body.

Whether our hero had to pay for dad as a passenger or just as a carry-on was not revealed.

The son-in-law was not penalized, or charged with any crimes. And although no one knows how our hero's wife greeted him upon his return, you can be sure there was one heck of a scrummage, a few mauls, and a number of penalty kicks.

8/6/2000


Poor Sports Archive
Jeffrey C. Hause has written professionally (in a very amateur fashion) for entertainers like Jay Leno, Jim Carrey, Rodney Dangerfield, Gabe Kaplan, Rick Dees and people he'd rather not tell you about. He's also written screenplays at Warner Brothers, Disney, Universal, Columbia, Franchise Pictures, the Samuel Goldwyn Co., and Interscope. Here's his résumé. E-mail: jeff@sportshollywood.com.

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