IT ALL turned very surreal at around 4pm on Tuesday afternoon.
Sky News – not Sky Sports News, Sky News – uploaded the latest world event to the rolling channel’s powerful breaking news ticker.
You know the one, the striking bright yellow attention grabber which runs across the screen. You can’t miss it.
Reserved usually for the big stuff like Donald Trump’s finger hovering over the red button, a big name death or perhaps when the country is crumbling under financial meltdown. Game changing stuff.
Yesterday it carried the breaking news that a Non-League football club’s overweight back-up goalkeeper had resigned for eating a pie during a football match.
Non-League.
Back-up goalkeeper.
Resigned.
Pie.
It wasn’t actually even a pie, it was a pasty. He’s not exactly quit either, he’s been fired. The nation is divided and the world, for a few hours, stopped turning.
Wayne Shaw like the rest of us must wonder if we’ve all stepped into a parrell universe as The Sun’s front page this morning carried a picture of the self-confessed blimp guzzling his treat late into Sutton’s FA Cup tie with Arsenal. The headline screams Hung Out To Pie.
The rest of us who hadn’t already totally lost the will to live wondered if this is really actually happening.
At first, I thought it was all a bit of fun. Gunners’ fans were in far better form than their team on Monday with some witty songs. Aiming chants of “we want fatty….we want fatty” at number one Ross Worner, they soon serenaded Shaw – a social media celebrity during their run – with songs including “give us some money, we’ll get you a pie”.
My first impression is the keeper had dug deep into his sizeable tracksuit bottoms, but alas the red top had it all arranged and added some money-can’t-buy publicity for their new betting service as the FA consider throwing the book at club and staff member.
Some will say they both should have been a lot smarter, and if Sutton will get into bed with not only the Sun, but its newly established gambling arm, then they are going to get their fingers burnt.
Shaw had probably seen the pound signs, and not in terms of the bets that have or haven’t been placed on him wolfing down his sideline snack.
No doubt some PR person has whispered in his ear about the benefits such exposure would bring. “You’d walk into the Celebrity Jungle or Big Brother” they would tempt the 23 stone stopper who it’s fair to assume hasn’t got much in the way of will power.
Yet to lose his job seems very harsh. He loves the club and the fans and is actually a pretty good goalkeeping coach. He’s helped turn Worner, the real Sutton keeper, into the best outside the Football League.
Joey Barton, who we’re told we should respect as an intellectual because he copies and pastes Shakespeare quotes on twitter despite once putting a cigarette out on a team-mates’ face, was only suspended by Rangers for betting on matches. Burnley were so bothered they signed him mid-ban.
Some would say this episode makes Non-League football look ridiculous, Sunday League stuff. I agree. Look at Lincoln City, no beers on the team bus after winning at Turf Moor. They had the small matter of North Ferriby United on Tuesday.
Everyone’s got their views on this, and I have mine… It goes something along the lines of: can we go back to talking about the actual football please?
