Andy Dawson - The World of Football According to Athletico Mince

Illustrations Phil Sweeney
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Special thanks to Mark Robson and Jim Campbell

ANDY SAYS Back in early 2016, I found myself at the Royal London Mens Tit and Heart Hospital, after a concerned blood relative had gifted me a voucher for a full tit MOT. In case youre wondering, I underwent a vigorous five-hour set of tests and checks and came up trumps in every category curvature, buoyancy, firmness, density and protrusion.

As I headed towards the exit, with my head and my breasts held high, I spotted a broken figure of a man slouched in the corner of a day room, waiting to be discharged. His eyes met mine and he held up a sign that simply read Help. I approached him and he whispered his story to me as best he could.

This battered husk of a man had recently undergone a triple heart bypass operation and his life had been hanging in the balance. He claimed that no one had been to visit him in days, and that his wife had chosen to take an extended holiday in the Maldives while he was recuperating.

I took pity on him, helping him to get home and, once there, I fed him some sugared water from a spoon, which he seemed to respond to. I returned to visit him every day after that, helping him to restore his strength by giving him special smoothies that I had concocted one was made from blended buttered Weetabix, another from air-fried chicken dippers and another from a medley of flavours from the Fridge Raiders range of snacks. All of them were blended with a creamy white Dolmio lasagne sauce.

His recovery was startling and, during one visit, he was visibly excited as he was due to be visited by an important council dignitary from his home town. He was hoping that the visit might include some kissing and he asked me if I would apply some lipstick for him in advance together we picked out a deep shade of red and he soon looked like a sweet, sweet fancy boy.

We both had a shared interest in football, and we began having long, hilarious conversations about various aspects of the beautiful game. It occurred to me that these informal chats would make for entertaining podcasts he agreed, so we booked a studio and looked forward to releasing our podcasts to the nation.

On the day of the first recording, his heart seized up and he died the coroner later said hed never seen such a build-up of trans fats in the system of someone who had only just undergone triple bypass surgery.

Undeterred, I rang up Bob Mortimer and he agreed to do the podcast instead, and Athletico Mince was born. This is the book of it.

BOB SAYS How very fucking hell!

January 1862: Football as we know it is invented after MPs decide that the lower orders need something for them to enthuse and argue about, in order to distract them from their horrific living and working conditions. The first team to be founded is Notts County but, as no other teams are founded until 1863, County have no one to play against for over a year. The players spend most of their time training and visiting other towns to see if anyone else has formed a football team yet.

December 1878: Goalposts are used for the first time since the game was invented. The team of toffs at Harrow boarding school pay four local working-class boys a farthing between them to mark out the goals, with each boy stripped naked, painted white and ordered to hold a piece of string at head height. When one of the posts faints in the sub-zero temperatures, the home-team captain carries the lad from the pitch and brings him round with a nip of brandy. He and the young lad are later married in a secret ceremony in Blackheath.

June 1914: Dogs.

May 1921: Everton defender Harold Haroldson vanishes after a tragic training-ground accident. A golden eagle swoops down and picks Haroldson up by the scruff of the neck before flying off with him. The player is never seen again, although some believe he is the anonymous, mythical bird-man who emerges from a Shropshire wood in 1927, covered in feathers and whooping like a fog horn.

May 1931: Arsenal and Preston North End play out a thrilling 23-23 draw in the first ever extra-time final at Wembley, following a dull, goalless ninety minutes. The players are completely exhausted for the added thirty minutes and strong, strange winds take any above-average pass swirling towards the back of the net.
Only six players are able to play in the replay the following day, which is abandoned at 1-0 when a golden eagle swoops down and gathers up the ball, dropping it in Arsenals net. The fact that it is the tenth anniversary of the Harold Haroldson incident adds a chilling extra dimension to it all.

November 1946: Derby Countys Billy Wincup has his head temporarily removed when manager Stan Abbott allows the players to play a five-a-side training game with samurai swords that his brother-in-law brought back from the war. Luckily, Wincups head is put in a bucket of ice and is quickly reattached, albeit initially the wrong way round.

December 1948: Nottingham Forest defender Charles Diablo stuns football and the nation by revealing that his life and career is guided by Satan. Diablo says, Lucifer is my prince and, each time my studs dig into the turf, I reach out to him and he grooms me. If we can get past West Brom in the quarter-finals and get a favourable draw in the last four, the FA Cup Final will be my Perdition. Follow me. God-fearing West Brom wing-half Stanley Belpitt says, Give me five minutes with Charles. Just five minutes. I will heal him with my love.

January 1952: With London in the grip of the Great Smog, matches in the capital are played as normal but decided by a unique method. Unable to see more than a few feet in front of them, each team has to declare how many goals they believe they scored and conceded at the end of ninety minutes. Then, after calculating the result by using a special equation supplied by the Department of Mathematics, the referee announces the score to the crowd by blowing the number of goals on two differently pitched bugles.

May 1953: The FA allow the use of iron shin pads, claiming that injuries from mistimed tackles will be a thing of the past. The shin pads are abandoned after just two weeks following a series of smashed-foot injuries and two fatigue-related deaths from players running around for ninety minutes with lumps of iron strapped to their shins.

May 1955: Wally Hart scores what is still regarded as the best ever goal in an FA Cup Final, for Tottenham against Wolves. Picking the ball up in his own half, he drills it into the pitch with such force that it tunnels its way under the Wolves midfield before surfacing on the edge of their area. Hart continues his run and collects the ball as it comes out of the ground, smashing it past the keeper, winning the Cup and getting a kiss off a lass into the bargain.

June 1956: The very first European Cup Final is played, between Real Madrid and Stade de Reims. The Spanish side win 4-3, but the final is very different to the kind we see today. As an experiment, the match is played in complete darkness, kicking off at 3am. Also, each player has a ball to himself, but most of them are soon burst by snipers who crouch in the corners of the stands. After the match, the losing French side must line up as the winners collect the trophy and stand motionless, allowing the Madrid players to ruffle their hair and pinch their cheeks in a patronising style. Then they are executed by the excited snipers.