Jelleyman’s Thrown a Wobbly: Saturday Afternoons in Front of the Telly. Jeff Stelling
er, grandmother. By all accounts, she was an avid viewer of the show and was bowled over by the regular mentions of her grandson on digital telly. In time, I began to mention her, too, and the pair became a bit of a fixture in the cache of Soccer Saturday catchphrases. One day we even went up to Scotland to do a piece on Granny Mae as she watched the show from her living room. Of course, The Good Doctor did what he always did best and popped up with a goal or two, which made for a really nice afternoon. I think Granny Mae was beside herself.
I guess the show is good at bringing out characters like Deucher. He was a player that wouldn't have got any publicity if it hadn't been for us, and to bring personalities to life like that is a vital part of Soccer Saturday. After all, the show would be pretty boring if the only coverage we dedicated to the lower leagues was the results and goalscorers. It really raised his profile – he even got a loan move to Northampton – though the fact he was quite handy in the box must have helped, too. He went to play in the States with Real Salt Lake (only in America) against the likes of David Beckham. God knows what Granny Mae must have made of that, but he's back in Scotland with Hamilton Academical now.
‘They'll be dancing in the streets
of Total Network Solutions!’
This was a play on the famous phrase, ‘They'll be dancing in the streets of Raith Rovers tonight’ which came from TV commentator Sam Leitch in the 1960s. I remember seeing the team name Total Network Solutions on the screen one afternoon and thinking, ‘What the hell is this?’ They happened to be a real team, of course, and a very good one at that – they were based in Llansantffraid-ym-Mechain (thank god they play under a different name) in the Welsh Premier League and tended to score a lot of goals. The more they won, the more their name lent itself to some form of acknowledgement. After yet another TNS goal, and in a flash of quick-witted humour that only a man with several O-levels could deliver, I yelled, ‘And they'll be dancing in the streets of Total Network Solutions tonight!’ It soon became compulsory to throw in the phrase with every TNS win.
It wasn't long before Mike Harris, the managing director of Total Network Solutions, began sending me a pack of TNS-related goodies every year, which included a Total Network Solutions T-shirt, but I've yet to parade this around the high-fashion emporia of Winchester. The club even invited me to their European games in the UEFA Cup, but the journey to Llansantffraid-ym-Mechain always seemed to be a trip too far.
Still, the name is an indication of how football has changed. The club flogged off their real title (Llansantffraid) to a sponsor for £250,000 when they qualified for the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1996, but they weren't the first – Dutch giants PSV are named after a company. But according to the excellent book Prawns In The Game: How Football Got Where It Is Today! by Paul French, which details the state of modern football, ‘Total Network Solutions are the most successful example of a sponsored team … thanks to Jeff Stelling’. That wasn't intended, of course, and I was gutted when they changed their name to The New Saints. It just didn't carry the same punch.
‘Guylain Ndumbu-Nsungu —
local boy made good!’
In the modern age, there are so many foreign players plying their trade across the country, but when an exotic-sounding player ends up in an unlikely location, like Rotherham for example, or Sheffield Wednesday in Guylain Ndumbu-Nsungu's case, it adds extra comedy spice. Some of these player-pronunciations are a real mouthful, and, to be honest, you get through it with trial and error. I think that when players come to this country we tend to anglicize their names, which is fair enough. Sometimes the players even do it themselves. For example, we pronounce the name of the crack German side as Bayern Munich, not Bayern München, which is the correct title. And if we pronounced Dirk Kuyt correctly, we'd run the risk of offending every member of the parish, given it sounds uncannily like a swear word Tony Soprano has only ever used once on the telly.
I know the BBC have a pronunciation guide, but crikey, if we stuck to the official pronunciations on Soccer Saturday, the viewers wouldn't have a clue who we were talking about half the time. Anyone who can understand former Evertonian and ex-panellist Peter Reid's scouse dialect would probably have a distinct advantage, however.
‘I Feel Good!’
For those of you unfamiliar with the Hartlepool United squad – and shame on you for not knowing – James Brown is a hotshot striker and a hell of a good player at Victoria Park. Being a bit of a music fan myself – and a pretty appalling karaoke singer to boot - I figured it might be an idea to pay my respects to his goalscoring feats with a rendition of his namesake's hit single ‘I Feel Good’ every time he hit the back of the net. It was funny for us, but I'd imagine Mr Brown must be absolutely sick of hearing about me terrorizing the nation's dogs with my tuneless singing. It's got to the stage where everybody on the panel looks forward to James Brown scoring. The boys even join in sometimes, but we often have to apologize to the sound crew afterwards.
I did take the joke too far on one occasion when, at the 2007/08 PFA Awards, I was asked to host the ceremony. Among a crowd of football stars and dignitaries, I knew there was a big Hartlepool contingent in attendance so I began singing ‘I feeeeeeeeeel gooooood!’ by way of an introduction. My vocal gymnastics were followed by a crashing silence. Clearly, people were thinking, ‘What the hell is he doing?’ God knows what a watching Fabio Capello must have thought. I'm not sure whether he left in disgust or not, but in one small enclave in a faraway corner, a dozen Hartlepool players were going absolutely mental, so it was worth it.
Then along came the doll. You may have seen it - a two-foot-high James Brown replica that sings and dances to the tune of ‘I Feel Good’ and was given its debut on the show on the opening day of the 2008/09 season. I'd just been to open a children's centre in Hartlepool and a guy had waited outside for three hours to give it to me. As he handed it over he said, ‘Please have this for the show and use it when James Brown scores. It'll put a smile back on the face of football.’ Anyway, when I turned it on and it started singing ‘I feeeeeel good!’ I laughed my cap off.
I'd kept this doll completely to myself through the pre-season of 2008/09, but I was determined to use it on the show. Lo and behold on the first day of the campaign, Hartlepool's James Brown scored and the doll made its first appearance. Alan McInally looked completely bewildered as I put it on the desk. But then moments later, James Brown scored again! I remember saying, ‘How sick are you going to be of this by the end of the season?’
The only problem was that James Brown suddenly stopped scoring for Hartlepool. I put the doll in mothballs in a Sainsbury's carrier bag behind my bed. When he hit the back of the net again, the doll was at home and we had to rely on my vocal chords, which felt a bit second-best, it has to be said.
‘It looks like Jelleyman's Thrown A Wobbly!’
I'd noticed Mansfield's Gareth Jelleyman in a match report one week and thought, ‘What a name! Wouldn't it be great if he was sent off one week.’ I wouldn't wish misfortune on any player, but there was clearly a great gag to be made about him ‘throwing a wobbly’. Jelleyman was also a defender, so I figured he was likely to score a red card during the course of a season, but when I looked through his records, blow me if he hadn't been sent off once in six seasons. Worse, or better depending on your point of view, he'd only picked up nine yellow cards in his entire career. Regardless, I had him in my mind just in case.
Then, it happened. In 2005/06, Mansfield Town were winning at home against Cheltenham by a couple of goals. At the end of the afternoon, when the results were coming in, when there's a furious flurry of goals on-screen and when there isn't the time for joking around, up pops the glorious news in red letters at the bottom of the screen: ‘Off: Gareth Jelleyman’. I thought, ‘Yessss! You beauty!’ I dropped everything. ‘Bugger the scores,’ I thought. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Gareth Jelleyman's been sent off! It looks like he's thrown a wobbly!’
It was a cheap gag, but I'd waited a long time for that one to come up. Normally I won't plan the gags in advance, but this time it came to me