BS: A very puzzling football puzzle

Subject: BS: A very puzzling football puzzle
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 05 Nov 14 - 01:53 AM

A thing about football that puzzles me inordinately, but on which I have never seen or heard a comment:-

The benches at soccer matches. Mangers, coaches & other team officials, when it is cold or wet, will don zip-up jackets or anoraks, or even occasionally, as with the impeccably presented Senhor Mourinho, smart old-fashioned overcoats of the sort that gentlemen wear. The substitute players will generally wear a sort of black over-jersey which seems be a uniform of some kind. These generally bear the maker's logo, and presumably come with the kit.

But, however cold, however wet, I have never seen a hat or headgear of any kind worn by anybody on a bench. It is well-known that in cold weather about 30% of body heat can be lost thru an uncovered head. I think the poor dears look ridiculously masochistic with the rain sometimes literally streaming off their hair. But never even a baseball cap to be seen.

Can anyone think of any reason for this odd, presumably macho, affectation of ultra-hardiness in the face of the elements? Is there perhaps some obscure FIFA regulation which forbids the head to be covered on a pitchside bench no matter how inclement the elements?

Anyone any idea?

≈Michael≈

Subject: RE: BS: A very puzzling football puzzle
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Nov 14 - 02:46 AM

Georgios Samaras on the Celtic bench.

Subject: RE: BS: A very puzzling football puzzle
From: Dave Sutherland
Date: 05 Nov 14 - 03:07 AM

Not quite the same thing but I have seen some of our players wearing a wooly hat (or a beanie as they are now called)during the half time warm up. I doubt that I'll get to our game tonight in time to see if any are wearing them prior to kick off but I'll keep an eye on the bench now you have asked this.

Subject: RE: BS: A very puzzling football puzzle
From: Musket
Date: 05 Nov 14 - 03:08 AM

When Jack Charlton was our manager, you could make out his flat cap from the other side of the ground.

Thinking on (this was forty years ago!) you are almost right. The reason was that nobody near him wore a hat.

Substitutes sometimes wear beanies. (Some wear gloves for that matter.)

Subject: RE: BS: A very puzzling football puzzle
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 05 Nov 14 - 03:35 AM

Thanks for these exceptions. But, to rephrase question a trifle, why are they so hens'-teeth rare, do you think?

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: A very puzzling football puzzle
From: Musket
Date: 05 Nov 14 - 03:43 AM

I was at Hillsborough last night and come the full time whistle wanted to hand out dunce caps for the feckless wastes of good Bovril.

No matter, they will be heroes again by Saturday.

Subject: RE: BS: A very puzzling football puzzle
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 05 Nov 14 - 04:31 AM

My remark above about how silly they look getting wet brings to mind one of my favourite phrases, of US origin I think, about the person who "hasn't enough sense to come in out if the rain".

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: A very puzzling football puzzle
From: G-Force
Date: 05 Nov 14 - 05:37 AM

I believe Tony Pulis often wears a baseball cap or similar.

Subject: RE: BS: A very puzzling football puzzle
From: GUEST,#
Date: 05 Nov 14 - 08:09 AM

http://www.onemedical.com/blog/live-well/body-heat/

It's a myth that we lose that much heat from our heads.

Subject: RE: BS: A very puzzling football puzzle
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 05 Nov 14 - 08:40 AM

#,

The article you mention comments that:

It's true that there may be some situations in which one might lose a tremendous amount of relative body heat through the head, such as when it's the only uncovered part of the body

which is exactly the situation that MGM·Lion is querying...

Having said that I don't think that it's a 'very puzzling puzzle' though. In my experience, and I live in one of England's colder towns, very few men wear hats/headgear whatever the weather.

I don't own any hats at all, never have. There's certainly no macho affectation about it. Never really thought about it, and have never felt the need.

Subject: RE: BS: A very puzzling football puzzle
From: Musket
Date: 05 Nov 14 - 08:54 AM

Colder town? Is that one of them southern buggers where they look at you gone out if you say "good morning" as they walk past you?

Subject: RE: BS: A very puzzling football puzzle
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 05 Nov 14 - 09:08 AM

No, it's Buxton.

Subject: RE: BS: A very puzzling football puzzle
From: Mo the caller
Date: 05 Nov 14 - 10:08 AM

Even more puzzling, the young women walking round towns to a night out with arms and legs bare, never-mind no hat, when I'm wearing about 5 layers of woolies

Subject: RE: BS: A very puzzling football puzzle
From: GUEST,MikeL2
Date: 05 Nov 14 - 10:42 AM

Hi Michael

You are right although until you pointed it out I never thought about it.
As a Man U supporter and and almost ever present spectator, I do remember that occasionally Fergie wore a wolly hat on a few occasions.

And I think I remember "said Mourino " wearing a kind of Cossack styled fur trimmed hat on one occasion.

I wonder if the dislike for wearing hats could be because of the piss that was taken out of Steve McClaren when he used the umbrella against Croatia. He is still known as " The Wally with the brolly.

Perhaps today's players don't like spoiling their new hair do's.

Cheers

Mike

Subject: RE: BS: A very puzzling football puzzle
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 05 Nov 14 - 11:22 AM

My grandfather had a principle, which I think was some sort of proverb from his native Roumania: "It is better to look a fool with an umbrella on a dry day than to look a fool without an umbrella on a wet day". It wasn't McLaren who was the wally, but all those other buggers with the rain running down their necks!

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: A very puzzling football puzzle
From: Musket
Date: 05 Nov 14 - 12:13 PM

Buxton is positively balmy. (Or is it barmy? I'm a Derbyshire lad myself but from the frozen wastelands of The Peoples' Republic of Bolsover.)

When my lads used to play for Creswell Nil in the U13s, I wore my flat cap to watch them, let me tell you. The wind whistled down Foxes' Field after they dismantled the pit headgear and coal prep plant. It was a bloody good windbreak... Now, the wind gathers speed in the crags and you have to tie the goalie down to his posts or he takes off.

Subject: RE: BS: A very puzzling football puzzle
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 05 Nov 14 - 12:31 PM

Well, much to my chagrin Musket, it appears that you're right.

A cursory glance does indeed seem to show that Bolsover is slightly colder than Buxton

Ho hum.

Subject: RE: BS: A very puzzling football puzzle
From: Musket
Date: 05 Nov 14 - 12:58 PM

Hah!

Back of the net!!!!

He says.... Having discarded his roots and now living in The Isle of Axholme.

Even colder, being further east still. Mind you, doesn't rain as much either.

Even further to go to get to Hillsborough for that matter.

Up the Owls!

Subject: RE: BS: A very puzzling football puzzle
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Nov 14 - 03:32 PM

American detectives
Never remove their hats
When investigating murders
In other peoples' flats.
But Chinese 'tecs
Are far more dreaded
And they always
appear bare-headed.

Spike Milligan

Subject: RE: BS: A very puzzling football puzzle
From: BobL
Date: 06 Nov 14 - 03:18 AM

Can't resist passing this on, concerning those young women on a night out:

Me: "She must be half out of her mind!"
Partner: "That's not the only thing she's half out of."

Subject: RE: BS: A very puzzling football puzzle
From: Dave Sutherland
Date: 06 Nov 14 - 03:31 AM

The report as promised; early in the first half last night as the Brentford subs warmed up of the three of them all were wearing training tops with hoods although none of them were using the said hood, however one of the three was wearing a thermal bonnet. About that time Brentford scored their first goal and the game imploded so I wasn't quite so observant after that. I was glad of my wooly hat which proved to be about the only comfort for the rest of the night.

Subject: RE: BS: A very puzzling football puzzle
From: GUEST,MikeL2
Date: 06 Nov 14 - 10:53 AM

Hi Michael

Lovely saying.

But......McClaren got sacked.

I never saw him use one at Old Trafford...and as you know Manchester is famous (infamous ??) for it's rain.

I once worked for a short spell in Santiago de Compostela where the City is described as La Lluvia es arte.

Sounds more romantic than Manchester and the rain IS warmer.

Regards

MikeL2

Subject: RE: BS: A very puzzling football puzzle
From: The Sandman
Date: 06 Nov 14 - 05:18 PM

do notts county fans[ are there more than one?] still sing the wheel barrow song

Subject: RE: BS: A very puzzling football puzzle
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 06 Nov 14 - 05:25 PM

I think McClaren got sacked for not winning, not for brollywallyism!

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: A very puzzling football puzzle
From: Dave Sutherland
Date: 07 Nov 14 - 03:05 AM

Correct MGM and he eventually ended up at our place for the three most wretched months I have experienced following Forest. How he has galvanised that lot down the A52 is beyond comprehension.

Subject: RE: BS: A very puzzling football puzzle
From: Musket
Date: 07 Nov 14 - 03:13 AM

Yeah but a farmer can't grow wheat in a waterlogged field. He was trying to make Forest look good!

Up the Owls!!!!

Subject: RE: BS: A very puzzling football puzzle
From: The Sandman
Date: 07 Nov 14 - 04:37 AM

poor old notts county, a very puzzling football puzzle, they couldne even afford a proper wheelbarrow for the pies.

Subject: RE: BS: A very puzzling football puzzle
From: Musket
Date: 07 Nov 14 - 05:55 AM

Poor Notts County, having to look over the river at The City Ground......

(Background. Where I come from, you either looked North to Sheffield or South to Nottingham, hence I have been a season ticket holder at Sheffield Wednesday since I was old enough to go and my brother ditto Forest.)

Subject: RE: BS: A very puzzling football puzzle
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 07 Nov 14 - 12:34 PM

Actually, Musket: that sort of emphatic repetition, as in "particularly puzzling puzzle", or, eg, "He plays most satisfactorily as a most disagreeably villainous villain, better than his colleague who is not a particularly heroic hero", is a recognised rhetorical device. A sort of pleonasm, I suppose one might call it.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: A very puzzling football puzzle
From: Musket
Date: 07 Nov 14 - 01:21 PM

You say rhetorical device. I say a system employed by those paid by the column inch.

Subject: RE: BS: A very puzzling football puzzle
From: GUEST,MikeL2
Date: 08 Nov 14 - 06:04 AM

hi

Michael < I think McClaren got sacked for not winning, not for brollywallyism!>

I agree but I don't think the "brollywallyism" helped his cause.

Dave < he eventually ended up at our place for the three most wretched months I have experienced following Forest. How he has galvanised that lot down the A52 is beyond comprehension.>

It is a mystery to me too. He came to Old Trafford from Derby, having been both a player and Assistant Manager there. Maybe he feels at home there. Mind you he has had other short-term successes and after returning then everything blew up.

Cheers

MikeL2

Subject: RE: BS: A very puzzling football puzzle
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 08 Nov 14 - 06:26 AM

If I were a director, I would rather employ a manager or coach who had, as the Americans say, the sense to come in out of the rain [or, if not possible, to raise an umbrella over his head] than one who deliberately sits there looking bloody miserable with the rain running from his saturated barnet right down his face & under his collar. It seems obvious to me that the former has far better sense & judgment. So I can't think that the brolly should have done McC any harm, careerwise. Who was it who gave him that stupidly epigrammatic sobriquet, I wonder? Probably some jealous fool who wished he'd had the foresight to bring his own umbrella or waterproof hat.

I still find this macho habit rather pathetic -- & puzzling...

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: A very puzzling football puzzle
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 08 Nov 14 - 11:43 AM

How about a general name for so many of them: --

"The prats without the hats"

???

Subject: RE: BS: A very puzzling football puzzle
From: The Sandman
Date: 08 Nov 14 - 12:04 PM

its better than the gits with kilts up to the tits

Subject: RE: BS: A very puzzling football puzzle
From: The Sandman
Date: 08 Nov 14 - 12:05 PM

maybe mclren should be sent to coventry

Subject: RE: BS: A very puzzling football puzzle
From: GUEST
Date: 08 Nov 14 - 05:54 PM

Why no hats?

They need to know the playing conditions.

Obvious innit?