Welcome to this week's Off the Ball, which is full of excuses

Indeed it is. And we start with an excuse for OTB's non-appearance for the last couple of weeks; unfortunately work commitments and a short Easter break have meant I've been unable to produce a column of late.

However, I've managed to sneak back in just in time for the final match of the season. And so what better subject could we pick than excuses? Well, probably any subject would have been better, given that, in the week I planned to do a feature on great excuses, BBC Radio 5 go and run an evening-long feature on... great excuses. Typical.

However, am I bovvered? Nope. For one thing, out of a fit of pique I didn't actually listen to the feature, so don't know what was said, and for a second thing, I haven't got anything else prepared so it's this or nothing. So this week it's excuses, excuses, excuses all the way. Well, nearly all the way... first, a pause for thought.

A fitting tribute?
Did anyone notice the black armbands worn last week to commemorate the anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster? In case you missed them, instead of the standard plain black cloth, they were specially designed and looked a bit like the puffed-up pads put on your arms when a doctor is trying to measure your blood pressure. Whilst this may seem pretty trivial, it set me wondering - is football trying too hard nowadays to remember its dead?

So far this season we've seen the passing of a number of legends, including George Best. Jimmy Johnstone and Peter Osgood. It also seems to me that, with each loss, clubs have also raised the bar in terms of how those deaths have been marked. Long gone, it seems, are the days when clubs just held a minute's silence. After Best's death we had the Minute's Applause, which has suddenly become de rigeur; moreover, there wasn't just one commemoration, but several of them spread over a number of matches. When Jimmy Johnstone died recently, every Celtic player wore his shirt number on their shorts in their next game.

Now, instead of a plain old simple black number, we have the Special Commemorative Armband.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not trying to be churlish or disrespect the dead - each one of these tributes was very moving. But I do wonder whether football, being the game of excess that it is, has embarked on a slippery slope in which deaths of former greats will become an excuse (there, that word again) to outdo each other. I have an unfortunate vision in which clubs start dreaming up ever-more inventive ways to mark the passing of a legend, and, eventually, Heaven forbid, start to exploit the commercial opportunities. Now that really would be disrespect the dead.

I sincerely hope I'm wrong, and I probably am, but football does have an unfortunate habit of not letting good taste get in the way of profit. I just hope that, for once, football retains its dignity in this particular case.

Anyway, that said, back to excuses. I still remember, as a nine-year-old, putting in a particularly poor performance in a school match one day. In the changing room afterwards, I apologised to the captain with what I thought was an honest "sorry, I played really badly today", to which he shot me an angry look and replied "Oh shut up with your excuses".

I don't think I've quite recovered from that, but as excuses go I hardly thought mine ranked with the finest. And here to prove it is OTB's list of favourite footballing excuses of all time.

1 Fergie's grey matter
Who will ever forget Alex Ferguson blaming his side's dismal showing on the colour of their kit? It's now a full ten years since Fergie reckoned that ManUre's grey strip meant the players were unable to pick each other out against the backdrop of Southampton supporters at the Dell, resulting in numerous passes going astray or straight to the opposition, not to mention a 3-0 deficit at half-time. So nothing to do with them being a bunch of useless, overpaid, colour-blind losers then.

2 You're still singing, you're still singing...
When Scotland lost 7-0 to Uruguay in a World Cup clash in 1954, you might have expected them to accept that they were, on the day, second best. But nope, one of their players that day, a certain Tommy Docherty (yes, that one), had his own explanation for the defeat. The players had, according to the Doc, become tired as a result of the length of the Uruguayan national anthem. Even by Docherty's impressive standards, this was inventive.

3 Kenny gets Tiggered
Many people will remember the ill-tempered FA Cup tie between Newcastle United and Stevenage a few years back. After the then-mighty (well, they thought so, anyway) United had failed to defeat lowly Stevenage, Toon boss Kenny Dalglish put their poor result down to the fact that "the balls were too bouncy"!

4 Jean-Alain Boumsong is big leggy
Staying with Newcastle, Graham Souness tried to explain Jean-Alain Boumsong's loss of form on the pitch at St James' Park, claiming that it was "treacherous, especially for leggy people". Well, it explains a lot. Like why Souness is now an ex-manager.

5 Shine on
Rotherham keeper Chris Mooney blamed his failure to stop a simple shot going through his legs on the fact that he was blinded by the sun shining off the head of his bald centre-half. (And no, it wasn't Stuart Bimson!)

6 Er, where was I?
Rio Ferdinand. I went shopping and forgot. Like, yeh, right.

7 What's that - I'm the next Bond? Really?
Jermaine Pennant's excuse in court for driving whilst banned was that his aunt had misread the letter telling him he was banned.

8 Eat your heart out Graham Poll
An unnamed referee, quoted in the current edition of the Sky Sports Football Yearbook, caused a bit of a stir in a local village match in South Africa. Things got a bit heated during the game, so much so that, instead of sticking to red cards, the referee shot dead the coach of one of the sides, injured two of the players and then ran off.

Eventually tracked down, the ref's excuse for his somewhat zealous use of discipline was "I am the master of the universe". Well, that'll teach Wenger and Jol to stick to the technical area in future.

9 Pot, kettle, black...
Oh, you have to laugh. Arsene Wenger actually complaining about Martin Jol's excuse that "I didn't see the incident" after the disputed Spurs goal at the weekend. You can just see those chickens coming home to roost...

10 David O'Leary, most weeks
My team are just my babies, and they're all injured and I've no money to buy players with.
Shut up, David, there's a good chap.

However, none of these can match up against the following excuse from the exciting world of Zambian tennis. Lighton Ndefwayl, one of Zambia's leading players, was, it seems, rather put out when he lost to arch-rival Musumba Bwayla, hence this outburst:

"Musumba Bwayla is a stupid man and a hopeless player. He has a huge nose and is cross-eyed. Girls hate him. He beat me because my jockstrap was too tight and because when he serves he farts, and that made me lose my concentration, for which I am famous throughout Zambia".

I wonder if Rusedski and Henman have the same problem? It might explain our Davis Cup performances.

Line of the week
I did enjoy the now infamous "What's the difference between the Highbury squirrel and Spurs" joke, to which the answer was "The squirrel has Champions' League experience". However, for its surreal quality, I think I'll award the prize to Turnip Taylor for his quote on Radio 5 straight after Marlon Harewood's FA Cup winner against Middlesbrough:

"You could see Marlon's quality in the hair" (yep, it's what he said).

Still, I guess there's a clue in Marlon's surname - maybe he really does have an unfair advantage when it comes to heading home!

That's all folks
Yep, that's it for another season. I can't believe it's the end of the season already, but with our absence from the play-offs, this Saturday marks the end of another campaign. Like United, I'll be taking a summer break, though I hope to be back next season (Neil, you better had be! - Ed). Till then, have a great summer, enjoy the World Cup, and roll on August!

Don't forget, you can contact Off the Ball whenever you want, by e-mailing us at cufcofftheball@aol.com

Neil Cole

If you missed Neil's previous 'Off The Ball' columns, you can find them here

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