Johnny P: I Played With Bosoms

By Johnny Pundit June 26, 2006

Johnny P: I Played With Bosoms

Our very own 1950s pundit names names

Funny old thing, Football. For instance, the great benefit of the foreign influence on football has been to return us to the 1950s. I look at a team-sheet and I think: 'just like the old days'.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it

Not in terms of the wages, of course. Dear me, no. I could barely run my Austin Seven on the wages QPR paid me in the 1952-1953 season. Had to resort to plucking out my nostril hairs just to be sure of a full pipe of an evening. No, I mean in terms of the players' names: something satisfyingly post-war about it all, if you ask me.

Get yourself an Albert

Just look at the World Cup. France has a Sidney and a Claude; Ecuador has no less than two Edwins, while Argentina rejoices in two Lionels; Ivory Coast have an Arthur; Serbia & Montenegro have an Albert (as all right-thinking gentlemen do); Australia have a Stan and a Harry; whilst Costa Rica, joy of joys, has a Walter, a Ronald, a Douglas, a Victor and even a Harold. You can be sure there's a few pipe-smokers amongst that little lot. You can't tell me those chaps haven't cut some rug at a tea dance, or sipped at a half of mild of an evening. Those are footballers' names the way they should be: straight-backed, firm-jawed, and clumpily-booted.

Bosoms makes you work hard

The more cynical reader may think that names don't matter. Maybe you're right. Then again, you just talk to my old trainer at Huddersfield Town, Bertie Bosoms, and see what his family think. In fact, all the lads clubbed round one week, and offered to pay for him to change his name by deed poll. Turned out he'd already had it done. Each to their own. No, names are like defensive clearances: you don't really notice them unless they're bad. Then suddenly they become very, very important indeed.

Till next time,

Toodle-pip,

Johnny Pundit