The Mizzenwood Times  sport

Mayor Pony and officials from Mizzenwood Athletic have apologised for any offence caused during a recent visit to the town by a German soccer team. The team from the Bundesliga were here to play a friendly against the home side. The Mayor had organised the match to show that he meant no offence for recent remarks about the German people � remarks which he says were taken out of context. It�s been reported that when he was asked how those remarks were taken out of context he said, �No comment.� But he claims that this remark has been taken out of context too.

The players' wives had travelled to Ireland with the team and they attended a welcoming ceremony on the opening night of their stay. On the following day, the wives were taken on a bus trip through the surrounding countryside while their husbands prepared for the game. Their interpreter for the day was a local singer called Anna. She had lived in Germany for a few years. Anna was due to sing the German National Anthem before the start of the game in the evening.

The welcoming ceremony on the previous night had gone on for much longer than expected, and the players' wives were tired on their trip through the countryside. The bus driver had spent years driving a sheep truck, but the constant noise of the sheep nearly drove him mad. That�s why he became a bus driver instead. But the constant yawning of the wives on the bus reminded him of his days driving the sheep truck. He called Anna over and told her that if they didn�t stop yawning, he�d stop the bus and get out.

She thought that if she could keep the wives� minds occupied, they�d stop yawning. She stood at the front of the bus and tried to think of something to entertain them, but she couldn�t think of anything. She just stood there saying, �Ahm� ahm� ahm�� After five minutes, the driver stopped the bus and got out. He walked away from them. They were stuck on a quiet country road out in the middle of nowhere.

The organisers of the match were more concerned about the absence of Anna rather than the wives. They wondered who they could get to sing the anthem if Anna didn�t make it, and all of the players and officials from Mizzenwood Athletic simultaneously thought of one person. There�s a local kiss-o-gram called Hidey. She�s been working in this role for nearly seven years now, and over the years her job description has expanded to include slightly more than just a kiss. But the thing that everyone from the club remembered was that her act started with a rendition of the German National Anthem.

Half an hour before the start of the match, there was still no sign of Anna or the wives, so Hidey was called. A local celebrity was due to make an appearance at the start of the game too. Sprainey Breen is an actor who plays a roofer in a popular TV show. This roofer loves eating crisps, and he never gets the job finished because he eats crisps all the time. The game was being sponsored by a crisp company, so he was introduced to the crowd before the game, and then the German National Anthem was supposed to be sung.

As Hidey stood in front of the microphone on the field, the people who had seen her act before wondered why she had to be dressed up as a peasant girl. They were used to seeing her undressed as a peasant girl, or about to be undressed. And then they suddenly remembered how her act ends. They had a feeling that she was about to be undressed, but no one knew what to do about it. The Mizzenwood players chose to stand there and look on. The German players could see what was happening, and they seemed unwilling to act as well.

But then one of them saw a bus arriving at one end of the field. Anna and the wives had caught up with the driver and convinced him to drive them back to the town. The German team were very anxious to prevent their wives seeing them in this situation � apparently there had been a story in the German press about several of the players and a stripper � so the line of German players moved in front of Hidey to hide her from their wives in the bus. Hidey was familiar with this routine (this is exactly why she�s called Hidey).

They thought it might look odd for them to be standing in this formation with no one at the microphone, so they told Sprainey to go there. He stood in front of the microphone, but he couldn�t think of anything to say, so he just ate his crisps. The driver of the bus had parked at the end of the field and he was about to open the door when he heard the sound of the crisps over the public address. He sat there for about thirty seconds, listening to that constant repetitive sound, and instead of opening the door he drove off again.

Anna and the wives eventually convinced him to return to the ground. They told him he could park a few hundred yards away and they�d walk to the match. By the time they got back, Hidey was well out of sight, and Anna finally got her chance to sing the German National Anthem. But after all the drama of the day she couldn�t remember the words. She stood at the microphone with her hand on her forehead and said, �Ahm� ahm� ahm��

The German team were very upset with this performance, and they blamed this for the fact that they only won four-nil. Anna and everyone from the club have apologised for the incident, and they insist that no offence was intended. Mayor Pony has invited the club to return next year, as a mark of respect for the people of Germany.
-Diane Baroque Orchestra.

Terry �Hospital� Passy-Passy, the midfield maestro and driving force behind Mizzenwood Athletic�s push for the League title, has made the headlines on the front pages again this week. According to witnesses at the scene, Terry head-butted the goalkeeper from his own team in an incident outside a pub. Terry defended his actions by claiming that Snappy Davy Cloggs, the goalkeeper, was staring at his girlfriend�s breasts, but one of his team mates is quoted as saying, �We were all staring at them. If she keeps getting them out like that, where else are we supposed to look? It�s like standing in the Himalayas and being told not to look at the mountains.�

As a result of this incident, Snappy now looks down every time he hears the name Tracy-Ann or the words 'She's picking a coin off the ground'. It�s feared that opponents will try to take advantage of his problem. There are reports that Mizzenwood's next opponents have all changed their names to 'Tracy-Ann'.

Snappy got through his first game without any major incidents. The club deny reports of a fight in the dressing room at half-time. It�s been claimed that Snappy complained of double vision, and he compared the ball to two huge breasts bearing down on him.
-Kitchenful Colastermast.

With the Gold Cup coming up in just a few days, all eyes, and money, will be on Roly Proletarian, the horse trained by local man, Galey Whale. This week I met Mr. Whale at his stable and he told me about how he first got into horse training. It started when he was only ten years old, and he trained his sister�s pet pony, Little Pony Diode. He told me that he was inspired after seeing Evel Knievel jumping over busses on TV, so he decided to train Little Pony Diode to jump over geese. The pony proved to have a natural ability for jumping over geese, but he wasn�t so good when it came to fences. Galey realised that it was the look of terror on the faces of the geese and the noise they made that impelled Little Pony Diode to jump as far as it possibly could. So Galey came up with the idea of putting photos of frightened geese next to the fences. He also recorded the sounds of the geese as Little Pony Diode jumped over them, and he played these as the pony approached a fence. This greatly improved Little Pony Diode�s jumping ability, and it was the start of Galey�s training career.

Roly Proletarian is now the favourite to win the Gold Cup. Galey insists that the scare of last week is well and truly behind them. The problem was with the jockey, who couldn�t figure out why or when he was being taxed. He always kept a very close watch, but he could never spot when it happened. He came to the conclusion that it must happen while he�s asleep, so he decided to stay awake. He went four days without any sleep, and odds on Little Pony Diode started to drift. The government intervened to make sure he got the necessary sleep before the big race. They announced the abolition of tax for everyone in the racing industry.

The opposition strongly criticised this move, claiming it would have a severe impact on the public accounts, but the Minister for Finance said, �If Roly Proletarian doesn�t win this race, the country is more or less bankrupt. But if he does win, you can expect significant tax cuts at the next election, and we�ll finally be able to do something about those people sleeping on park benches in our hospitals.�
-Member of Burliament.