And I had no idea, Tee Rex, about the first Welsh unused sub but also glanced it on Wiki. So I'll do like you guys and stand aside - leaving it for the greatest European Cup Trivia buff the world has ever seen ... or a Leeds fan.
Well, I'm neither but, thanks to the Leeds clue, I'll suggest it was Glen Letheren. The reason I'd heard of him is that a few years earlier I went to a charity cricket match between the local Knaresborough cricket club and a Leeds United XI. I was in my middle teens at the time and picked up a few autographs, not all from people I recognised. One was from someone who signed himself Glen followed by something approximating to a damped sine wave. Some time later I found it was from their then youth team goalkeeper who could only have been a couple of years older than I was.
edit: on further checking, he wasn't a couple of years older, it was (and is) a couple of months. I guess I must have been 16.
I could be bluffing, Capybara. How d'you know I'm not referring to the fact Leeds fans were so upset that this Welshman moved to Manchester United and became so hatefully obsessed with him that they know more about him than fans of the club for which he was an unused sub in the ...
Yeah, it was Glan Letheren. Also Leeds 1975. Or at least I think it is. Not my question - not my place to tell you to get basking ...
I love Glan's "damped sine wave" signature and can tell you Ajax of Amsterdam's Sies Wever was also an unused sub goalie in the European Cup Final - versus Panathinaikos at Wembley in 71.
As upset as I remain with Scotland for ruining the chance to have all the Irelands and UK teams at Euro 2016, I'm also upset with Wales for having no-one in Man U's 1968 European Cup-winning side (the first year subs were allowed in the final) as both Irelands, Scotland and England were represented in that side that night.
And I went to Knaresborough for a few hours once, on the way back up the road from a Yorkshire holiday. Ate in the World's End pub, down by the water, across from the old mother [?] theme park. Quite an experience.
Last edited by Alex Anderson; 23-11-2017, 17:25.
Reason: Old Mother Shipton ...
Still couldn't have been as creepily portentous as the guy who served me in the wee Sainsbury's up the top of the town. Strange place. And I come from Ayrshire.
Get basking, Walt. This AND Clint Hill signs a new contract? What a day you're having ...
Terry Yorath. Leeds United v Bayern 1975.
Not quite as good a day as when we went to Crewe away a couple of months ago Alex. We were full of drink, Clint Hill made his debut, the lads got a rare "Hawaii", and we sang : "FIVE NIL! IT'S JUST LIKE WATCHING CLINT HILL!", all the way back to the station. Which admittedly isn't far.
Terry Yorath aye. Walked into a pub in Alwoodley a few summers back, and there he was, propping up the bar. I didn't speak, I wasn't gonna waste my time with runners up Alex, no.
Cos one time I spent the day at the cricket and on the drink with Gary Shaw.
And I think even Obama would be strugglin to get around as many luxury locations as yerself, Jorge. But his aids totally googled Glan Letheren earlier. Bloody CIA ...
All I have to offer is blanking Franz Beckenbauer outside Glasgow City Chambers to get lured into a limo by Gerd Muller - because I only get kerb crawled by European Cup final scorers (against Leeds in 75 too) ... and gettin even drunker than i already was a few times in Bobby Lennox's bar in Saltcoats.
But not with Bobby ... who went to the same school as my mum tho.
Last edited by Alex Anderson; 23-11-2017, 22:59.
Reason: Bayern officially presenting the trophy to Glasgow ahead of the 2002 final at Hampden. One of my beloved anecdotes
And if you set that kind of question, Rogin - for example, deciding 1998 was one of the answers to "How many World Cup Finals have been contested between countries sharing a border?" because of French Guiana and Brazil - you'd be hunted out the pub and down the street by "Brewers Droopers", "Me Myself and Di", "Brain Drain" and every other team of retired primary school teachers and local council middle managers nursing their half-and-half lager shandies for three hours on their only night in the pub as they try to prove the stupidity of the people they normally take singularly un-self-aware pleasure in claiming they wouldn't be seen dead around but expose themselves as existentially dreading the discovery that a life of abstinence has not in fact made them better than anyone, involved in the tie-breaker you set, their lit answer sheets illuminating the precinct with an outrage that burns brighter than the strip light fluorescence beaming like multiple white light sabres through the lowermost slats of the decorative top of the three-quarters-descended roller shutters of the Spar Eight-til-Late. Where they're just cashing up.
Yet, your answer would be STRICTLY true.
That's a cracking question. I've got to ask - did you have Uruguay v Argentina in 1930 as one of the answers?
Ostensibly the World Cup final border question is straightforward, but controversy*is never far away. 1950 "but there was no final in 1950!", 74, 06, and the 2022 final between China and Russia of course. Adjust the question to include finalists who once shared a border and it starts to get messy ...
That's a cracking question. I've got to ask - did you have Uruguay v Argentina in 1930 as one of the answers?
Yeah - I'd just add that to what Seand says a couple posts underneath yours Sam. With ALL the caveats asterisked*.
I'm in with the real addicts here. Love it. Spew out a 2,000-word rant on how difficult it is to set fitba trivia questions involving geopolitical entities and it's neither pointed nor boring enough to distract anyone from anything other than the imaginary fitba trivia question contained within it, for a nano-second - to be used purely as an example.
We've turned group therapy into co-dependency here. Yer all rabid ... I could have been clean if it wasn't for all you ... I had plans ... a job ... a wife ...
Now? Now? Now all I have is the need to tell you *my knowledge of World Cup finalists and the primary landmass commonly understood as denoted by the name of that country is excellent but my knowledge of overseas territories, dependencies and any other shit which could constitute "border sharing" goes no further than what I said above about Brazil and French Guiana (1998) and knowing Spain and the Netherlands (2010) spent large chunks of their history sailing everywhere on the planet and annexing stuff. Germans had their moments too, of course, but they always handed theirs back in to the shop they nicked it from.
Please - can we just stick to borders AT THE TIME of the World Cup Final in question ...
Last edited by Alex Anderson; 24-11-2017, 09:37.
Reason: forensically foraging for and finding fun factoid-flavoured fluffery
But is England not contained within any British entity and therefore ... WHY AM I GETTING INTO THIS??!! I SET THIS QUESTION UP AS A JOKE??!! IT'S NOT EVEN ABOUT THE EUROPEAN CUP?!! CAN'T FUCKING HELP MYSELF ...
While yer on ad hoc: Was driving back from Blantyre Vics v Beith, Saturday before last, and BBC Radio Scotland's assorted hacks and pundits were round-table discussing Csaba Laszlo's poor opener to his career as Dundee United manager (they pumped Falkirk last week so he's now a genius again) and 1983 European Cup-Winners' Cup-winning captain Willie Miller was wondering why they would have appointed someone who'd been out of the Scottish game so long and who, in his post-match interview, had displayed the fact English wasn't his first language.
"I mean he speaks English well enough but, obviously not as well as he can speak ... erm ... not as well as he can talk ... erm ... his native tongue?"
And no-one round the table - not even the journalists - could help Willie out. Silence. Then mumbling about Romania and Hungary and a desperate, half-hearted "I know he's fluent in German ..."
STILL. Despite having managed Hearts and now at the country's sixth or seventh-biggest club, still Scottish football can't work out where Csaba Laszlo is from or what he is or what language is his first.
Can't have been many other drivers in Scotland that day shouting at their radio - in much the same way I shouted at myself at the start of this post - "Székely! Székely! The man's a fucking Székely!" ...
If you want a European cup version of the question :
How many finals have been contested by:
(a) clubs from the same country ;
(b) clubs from neighbouring countries ;
(c) clubs from two countries at either end of a scheduled ferry journey
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