McCann Telling It Like It Is: Friday on my mind

I’d almost forgotten about the man Friday until I chanced on a Guardian piece headed, “The greatest footballer you never heard of.”

I recognised the name Robin Friday only because, back in our London days, Eamon Dunphy used to go on about him. They’d both done time at Reading under Charlie Hurley.
In February 1974, against Doncaster Rovers, Friday, 30 yards out at an acute angle, took a clearance at pace with the outside of his left foot and flashed the ball first time across the ‘keeper to swerve inches inside the post.
Hurley, Ireland’s greatest-ever central defender, said later: “I stared for 10 seconds before I realised what had happened.”
Two years later, against Tranmere, Friday 35 yards from goal, took a ball thumped hard out of defence on his chest, swivelled, and, same movement, sent it arcing into the top right-hand corner. The local paper told that “silence fell across the stadium.”
Referee was Clive Thomas, who officiated at the 1974 and 1978 World Cups. In his autobiography, By The Book, he declared: “Even up against the likes of Pele and Cruyff, that rates as the best goal I have ever seen.”
The following close season, Friday was sold to Cardiff for a knock-down £30,000. Manager Jimmy Andrews asked Hurley why he was selling his star player so cheaply: “You’ll see”.
Friday was arrested on the station platform when he arrived in Cardiff, for having blagged his way onto the train at Reading. He was found next morning sleeping outside his hotel room, cradling a case of Tuborg. In the afternoon, against West Ham, marked by Bobby Moore, he scored two and was named man of the match. He was to play only another 20 games of football.
Red-carded against Brighton for kicking Mark Lawrenson in the face, he shat in Lawrenson’s kit-bag in the dressing-room because, “He is too fucking full of himself for a footballer.” Repulsive move, sound rationale.
By mid-season he had begun to disappear for days. The club explained he was prone to a “mystery illness.” Andrews recalled, “For a period I handled it but I’m afraid Robin was a hopeless case. He was lost and by the end he was uncontrollable”.
Rock writer Paolo Hewitt observed: “If George Best was football’s first pop star, Robin was football’s first rock star.”
Cardiff cancelled his contract. Finished at 25, he moved back to London, reportedly lived in a series of squats, died just before Xmas 1990, aged 38, from a heart attack possibly brought on by heroin overdose. His widow, Maxine, went back to college, and is now a criminal law solicitor practising in London.
Respective fans last year voted Friday Reading’s greatest-ever player and Cardiff’s “All-time Hero”: John Toshak came second.
The cover of the 1996 Super Furry Animals hit, ‘The Man Don’t Give A Fuck’ featured a photograph of Friday scoring a goal for Cardiff while giving the opposition net-minder the fingers.
Mainstream publishers have just reissued a biography written by Hewitt and former Oasis bass-player Paul McGuigan, The Greatest Footballer You Never Saw. Well worth checking out.

A survey in the US by the Pew Research Centre reveals that religious believers are more likely to support torture than non-believers. The margins are modest but, in statistical terms, highly significant.

White evangelical Protestants are the most likely religious category to support torture: 62 percent say that torturing “terrorist” suspects can often or sometimes be justified. The figure for white Catholics is 51 percent. The figures for Hispanics, almost all Catholic, and blacks, mainly Protestant, are lower.
When we factor in the religious dimension only, the figures are stark: fifty four percent of regular Church-goers of any race or religion think torture is OK sometimes or oftentimes. Of those who go to church irregularly – once a month or a few times a year – the percentage is 51 percent. The figure for those who seldom or never attend Church is 42 percent.
There you have it. Going to church makes it more likely you’ll take pleasure in other people’s pain.
Make torture history – reject religion now!

The bones of St. Therese didn’t make it to the Long Tower this time. But she did manage Knock.
Knock, Knock.
Who’s there?
Therese.
Therese who?
Therese a jolly good fellow!
And so say all the priests and religious of Ireland when they have a moment off from torture, rape and denial.
This was the skeleton-parts’ first visit to Ireland since 2001. The bones of Therese (that’s Therese of Lisieux, the “Little Flower”, as in “Ah, me little flower, jump up on my knee...”, not Teresa of Avila whom God visited at night, “in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron’s point a little fire... thrusting into my heart to pierce my very entrails... he drew it out to leave me all on fire...”) were given “full military honours” as they were carried, rattling, in a golden casket through the town to the parish church in Kildare.
Full military honours!
Fr. J. Linus Ryan reckoned it wasn’t a coincidence her bones, bits of gristle, flakes of shrivelled skin etc. were touring Ireland at a time of “trial” for the Catholic Church: “We hadn’t planned it that way, but maybe Therese planned to be with us at a difficult moment.”
Yep. Nothing a rape gang likes more than bits of a virgin they missed first time round.